Auths

Authentication System inspired by Auth0. It is a plug and play authentication and authorization system with in express application. Auths provides different kinds of APIs and functions along with Auths Dashboard out of the box, allowing you to manage your users and their access. Currently, Auths has support for three different types of databases: mysql2, sqlite, and postgres, to store user data and credentials.

Setup auths with 3 simple steps: Go to Getting Started

• Install auths in to your existing express application
• Setup required environment variable
• Link your express app to auths

Documentation:

Getting Started: setting up your project with sqlite db

• Install Auths

  npm i @iambpn/auths

• Setup Env Variables

  # File: .env
  
  AUTHS_DB_DRIVER=sqlite
  AUTHS_DB_URI=""; # sqlite uri is only supported
  AUTHS_SECRET=""; # secret to use while issuing jwt token / other token
  AUTHS_JWT_EXPIRATION_TIME=string; # JWT token expiration time
  AUTHS_LOGIN_TOKEN_EXPIRATION_TIME=string; # Login token expiration time
  AUTHS_HASH_SALT_ROUNDS=string; # number of rounds to use while hashing password

• Inside of main.ts file

  // File: main.ts
  
  // Load Env
  dotenv.config();
  
  // initiate express server
  const app = express();
  
  // configure global middlewares
  app.use(express.json());
  ...
  
  // Initiate auth package
  authsInit(app, path.join(__dirname, "permission.json")).then(()=>{
    // Other Routes (Your backend APIs)
    ...
  
    // start your express server
    app.listen(8080, () => {
      console.log("listening on port 8080");
    });
  });

• Seeding Permission (Optional)

  Since seeding permission can be tedious, you can create a permission.json file in your project root and seed it automatically

  // File: permission.json
  {
    "isSeeded": false, // boolean: "false" if you want to run the seed. This value will be automatically set to "true" after the first seed
  
    // default permissions
    "permission": [
      { "name": "create", "slug": "create" },
      ...
    ]
  }

• Accessing auths dashboard:

  <url>/auths & default username and password: [email protected] and admin123

  Example: http://localhost:8008/auths

  Preview:

  

  

• Auths Seeds:

  By Default, on first boot-up auths will seed the following

  • New user with default superAdmin_admin role

  • New superAdmin_admin role

    Default superAdmin_admin role has no permission and can do anything inside of auths dashboard but cannot access the client side resource. To access client side resource, Admin needs to manually add required permissions to default superAdmin_admin role. Only Users with default super admin role can access and use auths dashboard.

    Note: Default super admin is identified by its slug superAdmin__default so default super admin is not deletable.

Deep Dive

• Workflow diagram of Sign-up

  

• Workflow diagram of Login

  

• Workflow diagram of forgot password and reset password

  

List of ENV Variables

/*
  Secret key to encrypt auths jwt token.
*/
AUTHS_SECRET: string;

/*
  Auths Jwt token expiry time in Seconds
*/
AUTHS_JWT_EXPIRATION_TIME?: number;

/*
  Auths login token expiration time in MilliSeconds
*/
AUTHS_LOGIN_TOKEN_EXPIRATION_TIME?: number;

/*
  Number of salt rounds to use when encrypting password
*/
AUTHS_HASH_SALT_ROUNDS?: number;

/*
  Specifying Which Database Driver to Use

  Possible values:
    - 'better-sqlite'
    - 'mysql2'
    - 'node-postgres'
*/
AUTHS_DB_DRIVER: string;

/*
  Required if AUTHS_DB_DRIVER is 'better-sqlite'
*/
AUTHS_DB_URI?: string;

/*
  Required if AUTHS_DB_DRIVER is 'mysql2' or 'node-postgres'
*/
AUTHS_DB_HOST?: string;

/*
  Required if AUTHS_DB_DRIVER is 'mysql2' or 'node-postgres'
*/
AUTHS_DB_PORT?: number;

/*
  Required if AUTHS_DB_DRIVER is 'mysql2' or 'node-postgres'
*/
AUTHS_DB_USERNAME?: string;

/*
  Required if AUTHS_DB_DRIVER is 'mysql2' or 'node-postgres'
*/
AUTHS_DB_PASSWORD?: string;

/*
  Required if AUTHS_DB_DRIVER is 'mysql2' or 'node-postgres'
*/
AUTHS_DB_NAME?: string;

API References

Two system i.e (Auths and your Backend System) should uniquely identify the user using either their email or auths returned uuid.

Consumable REST APIs

Here are the list of exposed apis users can consume.

### Get User Login Token API
GET {URL}/auths/login HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json

{
  email: string;
  password: string;
}

### User Reset Password API
GET {URL}/auths/resetPassword HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json

{
  email: string;
  token: string; // Token returned from InitiateForgotPassword function
  newPassword: string;
}

### Get Current User
GET {URL}/auths/currentUser HTTP/1.1

Exported Functions

Here are the list of function that can be used to interact with auths system from backend directly.

function authsInit(app: Express, permissionFileUrl?: string): void;

function signup(
  email: string,
  password: string,
  roleSlug: string,
  others?: Record<string, any>
): Promise<{
  email: string;
  uuid: string;
  role: string;
}>;

function login(
  token: string, // Token returned from /auths/login API endpoint
  email: string,
  additionalPayload?: Record<string, any> // additional payload to store in jwt
): Promise<{
  email: string;
  uuid: string;
  jwtToken: string;
}>;

function validateUser(email: string): Promise<{
  uuid: string;
  email: string;
  others: string | null;
  createdAt: Date;
  updatedAt: Date;
}>;

function initiateForgotPasswordFn(
  email: string,
  returnToken?: string | undefined
): Promise<{
  email: string;
  token: string;
  expires_at: Date;
}>;

function getUserById(id: string): Promise<{
  role: {
    uuid: string;
    name: string;
    createdAt: Date;
    updatedAt: Date;
    slug: string;
  };
  uuid: string;
  email: string;
  others: string | null;
  createdAt: Date;
  updatedAt: Date;
}>;

Middlewares

Here are the list of middlewares that can be used inside of your express application.

/**
 * Check if user is authenticated via bearer token.
 */
function isAuthenticated(req: Request, res: Response, next: NextFunction): void;

/**
 * Check if user has required permission to access resources
 */
function requiredPermissions(permission_slugs: string[]): (req: Request, res: Response, next: NextFunction) => void;

Types

Here are the list of exposed Typescript Types

type AuthsRequestUser<T = Record<string, any>>

Limitation:

• Currently only better-sqlite3, node-postgres and mysql2 db drivers are only supported.

Challenges

• Due to the use of drizzle orm supporting multiple databases was a difficult task. To support multiple databases it required me to do some TS type fiddling and type error suppression and also required different migrations for each database. I think, this could have been prevented if i had used different orm like sequelize or typeorm (which out of the box supported different sql databases) with the tradeoff of losing drizzles end to end TS type safety.

• Since the drizzle is new for me i felt particularly difficult in reusing the same conditional logic with different select parameters (columns). Either, i had to rewrite the same query condition with different select parameters (columns) or i have to settle for fetching all the columns and manually discarding the unwanted columns.

Changelog

• 1.0.0
  • Auths Released
  • Added Sqlite database is supported
  • Added Authentication and Authorization support
• 2.0.0:
  • Adding support for mysql2 and postgres database
  • Added User management system
  • Added more env variables
  • Breaking: Auths function is now async
  • Breaking: AUTHS_DB_DRIVER env variable is now required.
• 2.0.1
  • Exposed getUserById function for backend system interactions
  • [Bug Fix] - Adding missing pagination in frontend

Examples

• Project Setup Example (TS)
• Ready to go example (JS)