tolkien

tolkien

Passwords are obsolete. If you haven't read this blog post yet, it should be the first thing you do today. It's the concept which made this module a reality.

`tolkien implements one time token authorization which renders passwords obsolete. Instead of signing in to a service using a username and password you sign in using a token that get's send to you using (email, sms, whatever) and once click the link/use the token you're authenticated. That's it.

• You never have to store, crypte, hash and salt passwords again.
• There is no need for forgot password and resets, everytime you need to authenticate it sends you a new token.
• Passwords can be changed without interaction of the service.
• 1 input for registering and logging in. This lowers the barrier for sign-ups.
• No passwords to remember, to generate and store. While solutions are 1Password are great they do not solve the issue nor does everybody on the web use them.
• SPAM/Scam free, ever got those phishing emails from sites asking for your user name and passworld and secretly steal all your information? Yes, that's a thing of the past.
• It's super flexible, it's not just sending tokens through email but things like SMS or even snail mail are possible.
• Want two factor auth? Send tokens using multiple services (email and SMS).

High five if you understood this reference

Installation

This module is released in the public npm registry and can be installed using:

npm install --save tolkien

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
  • tolkien.service
  • tolkien.login
  • tolkien.validate
  • tolkien.get
  • tolkien.set
  • tolkien.remove
• FAQ
• License

Usage

In all examples we assume that you've already required the module as following:

'use strict';

var Tolkien = require('tolkien');

Now that you've required the Tolkien module we need to initialize it. The Tolkien constructor allows one single argument which an options object which allows you to configure all the things. One of the most important things you need to configure is the store where we can save the generated tokens etc. There are two ways to provide us with a store:

• Provide a store using the store property. (The store you supply should have a get(key, fn), set(key, value, expire-ms, fn) and del(key, fn) interface)
• Have the module configure a store for us. We use Dynamis as store wrapper. This requires use of the type and client properties.

//
// Example of a dead simple custom memory store.
// @see ./memory.js in the root of this repository.
//
var data = Object.create(null);

var tolkien = new Tolkien({
  store: require('./memory');
});

//
// Or using dynamis interface.
//
var redis = require('redis')
  , client = redis.createClient();

var tolkien = new Tolkien({ type: 'redis', client: redis });

But a store isn't the only thing you can configure. Here are all the different options that we accept:

• store, A store object which we can use to store the token.
• type, The type of store we should generate using Dynamis. It can be redis, memcached or couchdb.
• client, Reference to the client that Dynamis needs to wrap.
• namespace, The prefix for all keys that we add in the store. Defaults to tolkien:.
• expire, Time that people have from generation of a token to using the token. Can be human readable string which is parsed by the ms module or a number which represents the amount of milliseconds it can take. Defaults to 5 minutes.

tolkien.service

Tolkien comes without any services configured by default as this service you want to use usually specific to your application and requires further configuration. Luckily registering new services is dead simple. To add a new service simply call the service method with the following arguments:

• name, A unique name of the service you're about to add. This name is later used by you to tell us which service we should use to send the one time authorization token.
• callback, This callback will be called every time someone needs to receive a token. The callback will receive 2 arguments:
  • data, An object which contains the token, id and all other extra properties you passed in to the tolkien.login method.
  • next, Completion callback for when you've send the token to the user. This callback assumes an error first pattern.
• options, Optional object which allows you to further configure the service. You can specify the following options:
  • type What kind token do you want to receive. It can either be a token which is cryptographically generated base58 string or number which is cryptographically generated random number which is ideal for SMS/TXT services. We default to token if no option is provided.
  • size If you've selected token as type this is the amount of bytes we need to generate for the token. And it will default to 16. If you've selected number as type it will be the maximum number that can be generated. This defaults to 9999.
  • expire, Optional expire for the generated tokens. Some methods take more time then others so you can use a custom timeout here (maybe you want to send the generated token through snail mail ;-)). This defaults to the value you've set in the constructor using the expire option.

//
// An example to setup email sending using the Mandrill e-mail service from
// Mailchip.
//
var mandrill = require('node-mandrill')(process.env.MANDRILL_API_KEY);

tolkien.service('email', function email(data, fn) {
  mandrill('/messages/send', {
    message: {
      to: [{ email: data.email, name: data.name }],
      from_email: '[e-mail]',
      subject: 'Hey, your example.org access-token!',
      text: [
        'ohai '+ data.name +'!',
        'click the following link to login to your account:',
        'http://example.com?token='+ data.token +'&id'+ data.id,
      ].join('\n');
    }
  }, fn);
}, { type: 'token' });

The data.token is automatically generated by us. All the other properties are passed in to the tolkien.login(data, fn) method.

There is no limit to the amount of services you wish to configure nor is there a limitation on the types of services you want to generate. You could send the generated token using:

• Email
• Text message
• Automated phone calls
• Social network direct messages (Twitter)
• IRC, WhatsApp and other chat apps.

The possibilities are endless!

tolkien.login

Now that you have the services configured you can start handling login attempts. This is done by calling the login method. It requires 2 arguments:

• data, A object that contains a service property with the name of a configured service and a id property which is the id of the user that wants to authenticate. All other keys that you add will automatically be passed in to service's callback function. Please note that this method automatically adds a token property to the supplied object so any existing token properties will be overridden.
• fn, A completion callback which follows the error first pattern. There a couple of reasons on why a login can fail:
  • You have no services configured.
  • The id or service property is missing.
  • You specified an unknown service name.
  • The user still has a pending token that needs to expire.
  • Token generation failed.
  • Service failed.
  • Storing failed.
  • Retrieving from storage failed.

In the list of errors you might have noticed that an operation can fail if the user already has a pending token. This might sounds odd but it's intentional. The reason for this is to simply prevent multiple login attempts to happen and it protects you users against spam.

tolkien.login({
  service: 'email',
  id: 'foobar'
}, function (err, data) {
  // Do stuffs
});

If you want to handle logins through express / http requests you could do something like:

app.post('/login', function (req, res) {
  if (!req.body.email) return res.end('missing email');

  lookupOrRegister(req.body.email, function (err, id) {
    if (err) return res.end('Failed things, '+ err.message);

    tolkien.login({ 
      service: 'email',
      id: id,
      to: req.body.email
    }, function (err) {
      if (err) return res.end('Failed things, '+ err.message);

      res.end('Check your email '+ req.body.email +' for your login token');
    });
  });
});

tolkien.validate

After sending tokens we also need a way to validate them. This is done using the validate method. You should call this when you've received the generated token and id from your user. It requires 2 arguments:

• data, A data object which contains a token and id property which contains the values that you received from the user.
• fn, A completion callback which follows the error first pattern. You can receive an error when:
  • The token or id is missing from the data object.
  • We failed to retrieve the data from the storage layer.
  • We failed to remove the token from the storage layer. Please do note that an error does not always indicate that a user has also failed to validate as we only remove token after we've validated the incoming data so you should always check the validation argument of this callback.

tolkien.validate({ token: 'foo', id: 'bar' }, function (err, validates, data) {
  // validates: Boolean indicating if the credentials are correct.
  // data: Reference to the object you passed in the validate function.
  // err: Thinks broke.
});

If you want to handle logins through express / http requests you could do something like:

app.get('/auth', function (req, res) {
  if (!req.query.id || !req.query.token) return res.end('Missing required params');
 
  tolkien.validate(req.query, function (err, validates, data) {
    if (!validates) res.redirect('/login'); // Login again

    req.session.id = data.id;
    res.end('Successfully logged in');
  });
});

tolkien.get

Please note this is a private API - but might still be useful for you.

Helper function which will retrieve the data from the storage layer. If the supplied object only has a token it will search the id, if it has an id it will search the token.

tolkien.get({ id: 'foo' }, function (err, data) {
  console.log(data.id);    // foo
  console.log(data.token); // bar
});

tolkien.set

Please note this is a private API - but might still be useful for you.

Helper function which will add the data to the storage layer.

tolkien.set({ id: 'foo', token: 'bar' }, expiree, function (err, data) {
  console.log(data.id);    // foo
  console.log(data.token); // bar
});

tolkien.remove

Please note this is a private API - but might still be useful for you.

Remove the token and id from the data layer.

tolkien.remove({ id: 'foo', token: 'bar' }, function (err, data) {
  console.log(data.id);    // foo
  console.log(data.token); // bar
});

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions:

How do I handle registration or send a different e-mail for registration?

Tolkien sees no difference between registration and login as both actions require the interactions: Supplying us with a user id and then send the token. But this does not mean that you as developer cannot tell the difference. We directly pass the provided object from the tolkin.login in to your configured service so you can add extra property like registration: true to the data object and send a different message.

tolkien.service('email', function email(data, fn) {
  var template;

  //
  // FYI: Don't fs.readFileSync in production, this is merely for illustrative
  // purposes.
  //
  if (data.registration) {
    template = fs.readFileSync(__dirname +'/registration.txt', 'utf-8');
  } else {
    template = fs.readFileSync(__dirname +'/login.txt', 'utf-8');
  }

  // use the Templatetron3000 to compile our template..
  template = template.replace('{token}', data.token)
                     .replace('{id}', data.id);

  youremailmodulefunction(template, data.to, fn);
});

tolkien.login({ 
  service: 'email',           // Use the `email` service.
  registration: true,         // Checked in the service.
  id: 'sp3c14lus3r1d',        // Required.
  to: '[e-mail]'    // Address we want to email to, used the service.
}, function send(err) {
  if (err) return retrylogin(err);

  console.log('yay, token send');
});

I want to use a custom token generator, how is this possible.

This is definitely possible. We have a special .extend property on our constructor which allows you create your own custom Tolkien instances and your own custom token generation methods. If you want to create custom token type generator you can do:

var Gandalf = Tolkien.extend({
  // size is the amount of bytes the service needs for the token.
  token: function generator(size, fn) {
    hardcorecryptoactiontron3000(size, function (err, data) {
      fn(err, data.toString('hex'));
    });
  }
});

var tolkien = new Gandalf({ store: require('./memory') });

And to custom number generator you can do:

var Gandalf = Tolkien.extend({
  // size is the maximum number set the service.
  number: function generator(size, fn) {
    customcryptonumbergeneratorcurveninja(size, fn);
  }
});

var tolkien = new Gandalf({ store: require('./memory') });

License

MIT