TypeScript API with authentication

This project purpose is to learn about JWT auth flow, using TypeScript.

Run Locally

1. Install both:

   • Node.js
   • MongoDB

   You will need to have MongoDB running on port 27017.

2. Clone the project:

   git clone https://github.com/AloisCRR/ts-api-users.git

3. Go to the project directory:

   cd ts-api-users

4. Install dependencies:

   npm install

5. Start the dev server:

   npm run dev

   REST API will run in http://localhost:3000.

6. To compile TypeScript to JavaScript and run the project:

   npm run build && npm start

API Reference

Sign up or register

POST /signup

Body	Type	Description
email	string	Required. User email address
password	string	Required. Account password

Sign in or login

POST /signin

Body	Type	Description
email	string	Required. User email address
password	string	Required. Account password

GET /auth

Headers	Type	Description
Authentication	JWT	Required. Jwt given on sign in or sign up

Screenshots

Basic input validation

Invalid password or email

Successful sign in

Sending token on headers

Authorization

Tech Stack

Name	Description
Node.js	Business logic
MongoDB	Database
Express	HTTP Server
TypeScript	JavaScript super-set to add static code analysis
JWT	Library to generate JWTs
Mongoose	ODM (Object Data Modeling)
Passport JWT	Passport strategy for authenticating with a JSON Web Token.
Bcrypt	Algorithm used to hash passwords.

Lessons Learned

Route creation

import { Router } from "express";
import { signIn, signUp } from "../controllers/user.controller";

const router = Router();

router.post("/signup", signUp);
router.post("/signin", signIn);

export default router;

Route controller

router.get(
  "/auth",
  passport.authenticate("jwt", { session: false }),
  (req, res) => {
    res.status(200).json({ msg: "Auth route succeeded" });
  }
);

Create token

function createToken(user: Iuser) {
  return jwt.sign({ id: user.id, email: user.email }, config.jwtSecret, {
    expiresIn: 86400,
  });
}

Works in this way... With JWT obviously you can generate a token for authentication, a token can hold public data in a stateless way. Public info is like the algorithm used to sign token or the type of token, also included something called "payload" which is content or body of token (this includes all data registered for token).

To generate a token we use a function from jwt module called sign, passing a "payload" that is information that token will save, and a secret used to sign the token.

Token is signed by a private key, and with the same key we can check if token is valid and use it to authenticate an user, passport takes his time in this, with passport-jwt we can use a function called passport.authenticate() which is a middleware that handles all the logic from getting the token from auth header to validate it and attach the token payload to the request object of express.

Roadmap

• App functionality
• Testing
• Hosting, domain, etc.
• CI/CD