passport-jwt

A Passport strategy for authenticating with a JSON Web Token.

This module lets you authenticate endpoints using a JSON Web token. It is intended to be used to secure RESTful endpoints without sessions.

Install

This module has not yet been published to the public NPM repository. Until it is you can install it with the command

$ npm install git+https://github.com/themikenicholson/passport-jwt.git 

Usage

Configure Strategy

The jwt authentication strategy is constructed as follows:

new JwtStrategy(secretOrKey, options, verify)

secretOrKey is a string or buffer containing the secret (symmetric) or PEM-encoded public key (asymmetric) for verifying the token's signature.

options is an object literal containing options to control how the token is extracted from the request or verified.

• issuer: If defined the token issuer (iss) will be verified against this value.
• audience: If defined the toekn audience (aud) will be verified against this value.
• tokenBodyField: Field in a request body to search for the jwt. Default is auth_token.
• tokenHeader: Expected authorization scheme if token is submitted through the HTTP Authorization header. Defaults to JWT

verify is a function with args verify(jwt_payload, done)

• jwt_payload is an object literal containing the decoded JWT payload.
• done is a passport error first callback accepting arguments done(error, user, info)

An example configuration:

var JwtStrategy = require('passport-jwt');
var opts = {issuer: "accounts.examplesoft.com", audience: "yoursite.net"};  
passport.use(new JwtStrategy('secret', opts, function(jwt_paylaod, done) {
    User.findOne({id: jwt_paylaod.sub}, function(err, user) {
        if (err) {
            return done(err, false);
        }
        if (user) {
            done(null, user);
        } else {
            done(null, false);
            // or you could create a new account
        }
    });
}));

Authenticate requests

Use passport.authenticate() specifying 'jwt' as the strategy.

app.post('/profile', passport.authenticate('jwt', { session: false}), 
    function(req, res) {
        res.send(req.user.profile);
    }
);

Include the JWT in requests

The strategy will first check the request for the standard Authorization header.
If this header is present and the scheme matches options.authScheme or 'JWT' if no auth scheme was specified then the token will be retrieved from it. e.g.

Authorization: JWT JSON_WEB_TOKEN_STRING.....

If the an authorization header with the expected scheme is not found the request body will be checked for a field matching options.tokenBodyField or 'auth_token' if the option was not specified.

Tests

$ npm install
$ npm test

License

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2014 Mike Nicholson