limes

limes

limes authenticates users.

Installation

$ npm install limes

Quick start

First you need to add a reference to limes in your application.

var Limes = require('limes');

Then you can call the Limes constructor function to create a new limes instance. You need to specify a parameter object with the identityProviderName and either a privateKey or a certificate, each in .pem format. Optionally, you may also provide both.

var limes = new Limes({
  identityProviderName: 'auth.example.com',
  privateKey: fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'privateKey.pem')),
  certificate: fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'certificate.pem'))
});

Please note that you have to specify the private key if you want to issue tokens and the certificate if you want to verify them.

Issuing tokens

To issue a token call the issueTokenFor function and provide the subject you want to issue the token for as well as the desired payload.

var token = limes.issueTokenFor('Jane Doe', {
  foo: 'bar'
});

Verifying tokens

To verify a token call the verifyToken function and provide the token and a callback. As a result, it returns the decoded token.

limes.verifyToken(token, function (err, decodedToken) {
  // ...
});

Using middleware

To verify tokens there are also middlewares for Express and Socket.io. To use them call the verifyTokenMiddlewareExpress or verifyTokenMiddlewareSocketIo functions and optionally specify the payload for non-authenticated users.

app.use(limes.verifyTokenMiddlewareExpress({
  payloadWhenAnonymous: {
    foo: 'bar'
  }
}));

io.use(limes.verifyTokenMiddlewareSocketIo({
  payloadWhenAnonymous: {
    foo: 'bar'
  }
}));

If a request does not provide a token, an anonymous token is issued. If a request does have an invalid token, an expired one, or one with a wrong issuer, the middleware returns a 401 respectively an error.

Otherwise, it attaches the decoded token to req.user respectively socket.user.

The Express middleware expects the token to be inside an HTTP header called authorization and prefixed with the term Bearer.

authorization: Bearer <token>

Alternatively, you may transfer the token using the query string parameter token.

GET /foo/bar?token=<token>

The Socket.io middleware expects you to emit an authenticate event and provide the token as well as a callback.

socket.emit('authenticate', token, function (err) {
  // ...
});

Running the build

This module can be built using Grunt. Besides running the tests, this also analyses the code. To run Grunt, go to the folder where you have installed limes and run grunt. You need to have grunt-cli installed.

$ grunt

License

The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2014-2015 the native web.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.