The jwks-rsa npm package is a library that helps to retrieve RSA signing keys from a JWKS (JSON Web Key Set) endpoint. It is primarily used in scenarios where you need to verify the signature of JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) against public keys published in a JWKS. This is common in modern authentication flows, especially those implementing OpenID Connect.
Retrieving RSA signing keys
This feature allows you to retrieve RSA signing keys from a JWKS endpoint. The `getSigningKey` method is used to fetch the key using the `kid` (key ID) from the JWT header. This is useful for verifying JWT signatures.
const jwksClient = require('jwks-rsa');
const client = jwksClient({
jwksUri: 'https://your-domain.com/.well-known/jwks.json'
});
function getKey(header, callback){
client.getSigningKey(header.kid, function(err, key) {
var signingKey = key.publicKey || key.rsaPublicKey;
callback(null, signingKey);
});
}Integrating with Express.js for JWT authentication
This code snippet demonstrates how to use jwks-rsa with express-jwt middleware for securing Express.js applications. The `expressJwtSecret` method is used to dynamically provide a signing key based on the incoming JWT's `kid`.
const jwt = require('express-jwt');
const jwksRsa = require('jwks-rsa');
const checkJwt = jwt({
secret: jwksRsa.expressJwtSecret({
cache: true,
rateLimit: true,
jwksRequestsPerMinute: 5,
jwksUri: 'https://your-domain.com/.well-known/jwks.json'
}),
audience: 'your-audience',
issuer: 'https://your-domain.com/',
algorithms: ['RS256']
});A package for JavaScript Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) and JSON Web Token (JWT) implementation. It offers similar functionalities for handling JWKS but is more comprehensive in terms of JOSE standards support, including encryption and decryption capabilities, which jwks-rsa does not directly offer.
This package is primarily focused on creating and verifying JSON Web Tokens (JWTs). While it doesn't directly handle JWKS, it is often used in conjunction with libraries like jwks-rsa for verifying JWT signatures against public keys obtained from a JWKS endpoint.
š Documentation - š Getting Started - š¬ Feedback
Using npm in your project directory run the following command:
npm install --save jwks-rsa
Supports all currently registered JWK types and JWS Algorithms, see panva/jose#262 for more information.
Provide a JWKS endpoint which exposes your signing keys.
const jwksClient = require('jwks-rsa');
const client = jwksClient({
jwksUri: 'https://sandrino.auth0.com/.well-known/jwks.json',
requestHeaders: {}, // Optional
timeout: 30000 // Defaults to 30s
});
Then use getSigningKey to retrieve a signing key that matches a specific kid.
const kid = 'RkI5MjI5OUY5ODc1N0Q4QzM0OUYzNkVGMTJDOUEzQkFCOTU3NjE2Rg';
const key = await client.getSigningKey(kid);
const signingKey = key.getPublicKey();
We appreciate feedback and contribution to this repo! Before you get started, please see the following:
To provide feedback or report a bug, please raise an issue on our issue tracker.
Please do not report security vulnerabilities on the public GitHub issue tracker. The Responsible Disclosure Program details the procedure for disclosing security issues.
Auth0 is an easy to implement, adaptable authentication and authorization platform. To learn more checkout Why Auth0?
This project is licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.
v3.2.0 (2025-03-18)
Changed
Fixed
FAQs
Library to retrieve RSA public keys from a JWKS endpoint
The npm package jwks-rsa receives a total of 3,736,761 weekly downloads. As such, jwks-rsa popularity was classified as popular.
We found that jwks-rsa demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago.Ā It has 45 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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