authboot

A simple slay preboot that initializes an authboot namespaced lookup function and middeware on the app object to be used within the application. Its meant to wrap up some configuration conventions to be more easily reused in multiple slay applications without duplicating code unnecessarily.

The purpose of this library is to simply wrap an auth middleware (currently basic-auth based) and give a mechanism for async validation of that auth. We support properties of express-basic-auth as configuration. The lookup function replaces the authorizer function with a slightly tweaked API which we will cover below.

install

npm install authboot --save

API

users - Object

The users object we give contains assumptions if you are not passing in your own lookup function. Those assumptions is that that each key must be the username for your authorized users while the value must be a hexidecimal encoding of the sha256 hash of the password. This ensures we are following security best practices even when this information is loaded in memory from an encrypted config.

lookup({ name, password }, callback)

Function to override the default behavior of using the users object as a direct comparison map for who is authorized and using the provided algorithm to compare the given password with the hash we have stored as part of the users object.

challenge Boolean

Indicating whether we will send a challenge response for browser based requests.

realm String

The realm given for the service for browser storage of basic auth.

algorithm String

The algorithm given to crypto when creating a hash.

usage

Example #1

// root slay preboot in preboots/index.js or preboots.js

module.exports = function (app, opts, callback) {
  app.preboot(require('authboot')({
    users: {
      name: 'hexOfSHA256HashOfPassword'
    },
    // send challenge request for browser auth
    challenge: true,
    realm: 'myservicerealm'
  }));

  callback();
};

// middlewares/index.js or middlewares.js

module.exports = function (app, options, callback) {
  // add the middleware itself to the app object when you setup all your other
  // middlewares. If its not going to be used across the board for all routes,
  // this would be setup in each route handler or on the router itself.
  app.use(app.authboot.middleware);
};

Example #2

const db = require('./db');
const verify = require('./verify');

// root slay preboot in preboots/index.js or preboots.js

module.exports = function (app, opts, callback) {
  app.preboot(require('authboot')({
    // override lookup with our own async lookup
    lookup: ({ user, password }, callback) => {
      db.users.get(user, (err, user) => {
        if (err) return callback(err);
        verify.password(user.passwordHash, password, callback);
      });
    },
    // send challenge request for browser auth
    challenge: true,
    realm: 'myservicerealm'
  }));

  callback();
};

// routes/index.js or routes.js
const db = require('./db');

module.exports = function (app, options, callback) {
  app.routes.get('/resource', app.authboot.middleware, (req, res, next) => {
    // authed route
    db.resource.get(req.params, (err, resource) => {
      if (err) return next(err);
      res.status(200).json(resource);
    })
  });
};

test

npm test