Passport is an authentication middleware for Node.js that can be used in any Express-based web application. It supports a comprehensive set of strategies to authenticate users using a username and password, Facebook, Twitter, and more.
Local Authentication
This feature allows you to set up local authentication where users can log in with a username and password. The LocalStrategy is used to authenticate users against a local database.
passport.use(new LocalStrategy(
function(username, password, done) {
User.findOne({ username: username }, function (err, user) {
if (err) { return done(err); }
if (!user) { return done(null, false); }
if (!user.verifyPassword(password)) { return done(null, false); }
return done(null, user);
});
}
));OAuth Authentication
Passport can be used to authenticate users using OAuth providers like GitHub, Facebook, Twitter, etc. This code sample demonstrates how to authenticate users with GitHub using the GitHubStrategy.
passport.use(new GitHubStrategy({
clientID: GITHUB_CLIENT_ID,
clientSecret: GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET,
callbackURL: 'http://yourdomain.com/auth/github/callback'
},
function(accessToken, refreshToken, profile, cb) {
User.findOrCreate({ githubId: profile.id }, function (err, user) {
return cb(err, user);
});
}
));JWT Authentication
Passport supports JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for securing API endpoints. The JwtStrategy is used to authenticate users based on a JWT token sent in the authorization header.
const JwtStrategy = require('passport-jwt').Strategy,
ExtractJwt = require('passport-jwt').ExtractJwt;
let opts = {}
opts.jwtFromRequest = ExtractJwt.fromAuthHeaderAsBearerToken();
opts.secretOrKey = 'secret';
passport.use(new JwtStrategy(opts, function(jwt_payload, done) {
User.findOne({id: jwt_payload.sub}, function(err, user) {
if (err) {
return done(err, false);
}
if (user) {
return done(null, user);
} else {
return done(null, false);
// or you could create a new account
}
});
}));This package is a middleware that validates JSON Web Tokens for authentication purposes, similar to Passport's JWT strategy. It is specifically focused on JWT and does not support other authentication methods.
The oauth package provides a generic implementation of OAuth 1.0 and 2.0 that can be used for connecting to different OAuth providers. Unlike Passport, it does not come with pre-built strategies and requires more setup.
Grant is an OAuth middleware for Express, Koa, and Hapi, supporting over 180 providers out of the box. It is similar to Passport's OAuth strategies but is more focused on OAuth and social login flows.
Passport is Express-compatible authentication middleware for Node.js.
Passport's sole purpose is to authenticate requests, which it does through an extensible set of plugins known as strategies. Passport does not mount routes or assume any particular database schema, which maximizes flexiblity and allows application-level decisions to be made by the developer. The API is simple: you provide Passport a request to authenticate, and Passport provides hooks for controlling what occurs when authentication succeeds or fails.
$ npm install passport
Passport uses the concept of strategies to authenticate requests. Strategies can range from verifying username and password credentials, delegated authentication using OAuth (for example, via Facebook or Twitter), or federated authentication using OpenID.
Before authenticating requests, the strategy (or strategies) used by an application must be configured.
passport.use(new LocalStrategy(
function(username, password, done) {
User.findOne({ username: username }, function (err, user) {
if (err) { return done(err); }
if (!user) { return done(null, false); }
if (!user.verifyPassword(password)) { return done(null, false); }
return done(null, user);
});
}
));
There are 300+ strategies. Find the ones you want at: passportjs.org
Passport will maintain persistent login sessions. In order for persistent sessions to work, the authenticated user must be serialized to the session, and deserialized when subsequent requests are made.
Passport does not impose any restrictions on how your user records are stored. Instead, you provide functions to Passport which implements the necessary serialization and deserialization logic. In a typical application, this will be as simple as serializing the user ID, and finding the user by ID when deserializing.
passport.serializeUser(function(user, done) {
done(null, user.id);
});
passport.deserializeUser(function(id, done) {
User.findById(id, function (err, user) {
done(err, user);
});
});
To use Passport in an Express or
Connect-based application, configure it
with the required passport.initialize() middleware. If your application uses
persistent login sessions (recommended, but not required), passport.session()
middleware must also be used.
app.configure(function() {
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/../../public'));
app.use(express.cookieParser());
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.session({ secret: 'keyboard cat' }));
app.use(passport.initialize());
app.use(passport.session());
app.use(app.router);
});
Passport provides an authenticate() function, which is used as route
middleware to authenticate requests.
app.post('/login',
passport.authenticate('local', { failureRedirect: '/login' }),
function(req, res) {
res.redirect('/');
});
Passport has a comprehensive set of over 300 authentication strategies covering social networking, enterprise integration, API services, and more.
There is a Strategy Search at passportjs.org
The following table lists commonly used strategies:
| Strategy | Protocol | Developer |
|---|---|---|
| Local | HTML form | Jared Hanson |
| OpenID | OpenID | Jared Hanson |
| BrowserID | BrowserID | Jared Hanson |
| OAuth 2.0 | Jared Hanson | |
| OpenID | Jared Hanson | |
| OAuth / OAuth 2.0 | Jared Hanson | |
| OAuth | Jared Hanson |
passport-local)
The modules page on the wiki lists other useful modules that build upon or integrate with Passport.
$ npm install
$ make test
This project is supported by 
Auth0
Copyright (c) 2011-2015 Jared Hanson <http://jaredhanson.net/>
FAQs
Simple, unobtrusive authentication for Node.js.
The npm package passport receives a total of 2,313,868 weekly downloads. As such, passport popularity was classified as popular.
We found that passport demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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