Session


Aug. 19, 2024

Authentication basics for Node apps

Pretty much every serious web app needs to include a way for users to log in securely and to be served their content. Since there’s a lot of complexity in this, it’s highly advisable to use good libraries to support this. In a future post we’re going to use those libraries, but first I want to explain what’s happening at the lower level and tease out some of the concepts as we build a secure system from the ground up.

Sep. 12, 2023

Cookies, Sessions & Tokens

I’m up to the point in a web app where it needs to come off my lan and into the hands of a couple of users for alpha feedback. Before that happens, I have to add some sort of login/authentication system since it I want to use real, sensitive data. There’s lots of detailed blog posts and videos of how to implement this in an Express app with passport, but what I was missing was the big picture of what actually needs to happen.