koa-jwt

Koa middleware that validates JSON Web Tokens and sets ctx.state.user (by default) if a valid token is provided.

This module lets you authenticate HTTP requests using JSON Web Tokens in your Koa (node.js) applications.

See this article for a good introduction.

Install

$ npm install koa-jwt

Usage

The JWT authentication middleware authenticates callers using a JWT token. If the token is valid, ctx.state.user (by default) will be set with the JSON object decoded to be used by later middleware for authorization and access control.

Retrieving the token

The token is normally provided in a HTTP header (Authorization), but it can also be provided in a cookie by setting the opts.cookie option to the name of the cookie that contains the token. Custom token retrieval can also be done through the opts.getToken option. The provided function should match the following interface:

/**
 * Your custom token resolver
 * @this The ctx object passed to the middleware
 *
 * @param  {object}      opts The middleware's options
 * @return {String|null}      The resolved token or null if not found
 */

The resolution order for the token is the following. The first non-empty token resolved will be the one that is verified.

• opts.getToken function
• check the cookies (if opts.cookie is set)
• check the Authorization header for a bearer token

Passing the secret

Normally you provide a single shared secret in opts.secret, but another alternative is to have an earlier middleware set ctx.state.secret, typically per request. If this property exists, it will be used instead of the one in opts.secret.

Example

var koa = require('koa');
var jwt = require('koa-jwt');

var app = koa();

// Custom 401 handling if you don't want to expose koa-jwt errors to users
app.use(function *(next){
  try {
    yield next;
  } catch (err) {
    if (401 == err.status) {
      this.status = 401;
      this.body = 'Protected resource, use Authorization header to get access\n';
    } else {
      throw err;
    }
  }
});

// Unprotected middleware
app.use(function *(next){
  if (this.url.match(/^\/public/)) {
    this.body = 'unprotected\n';
  } else {
    yield next;
  }
});

// Middleware below this line is only reached if JWT token is valid
app.use(jwt({ secret: 'shared-secret' }));

// Protected middleware
app.use(function *(){
  if (this.url.match(/^\/api/)) {
    this.body = 'protected\n';
  }
});

app.listen(3000);

Alternatively you can conditionally run the jwt middleware under certain conditions:

var koa = require('koa');
var jwt = require('koa-jwt');

var app = koa();

// Middleware below this line is only reached if JWT token is valid
// unless the URL starts with '/public'
app.use(jwt({ secret: 'shared-secret' }).unless({ path: [/^\/public/] }));

// Unprotected middleware
app.use(function *(next){
  if (this.url.match(/^\/public/)) {
    this.body = 'unprotected\n';
  } else {
    yield next;
  }
});

// Protected middleware
app.use(function *(){
  if (this.url.match(/^\/api/)) {
    this.body = 'protected\n';
  }
});

app.listen(3000);

For more information on unless exceptions, check koa-unless.

You can also add the passthrough option to always yield next, even if no valid Authorization header was found:

app.use(jwt({ secret: 'shared-secret', passthrough: true }));

This lets downstream middleware make decisions based on whether ctx.state.user is set.

If you prefer to use another ctx key for the decoded data, just pass in key, like so:

app.use(jwt({ secret: 'shared-secret', key: 'jwtdata' }));

This makes the decoded data available as ctx.state.jwtdata.

You can specify audience and/or issuer as well:

app.use(jwt({ secret:   'shared-secret',
              audience: 'http://myapi/protected',
              issuer:   'http://issuer' }));

If the JWT has an expiration (exp), it will be checked.

This module also support tokens signed with public/private key pairs. Instead of a secret, you can specify a Buffer with the public key:

var publicKey = fs.readFileSync('/path/to/public.pub');
app.use(jwt({ secret: publicKey }));

Related Modules

• jsonwebtoken — JSON Web Token signing and verification

Note that koa-jwt exports the sign, verify and decode functions from the above module as a convenience.

Tests

$ npm install
$ npm test

Author

Stian Grytøyr

Credits

This code is largely based on express-jwt.

• Auth0
• Matias Woloski

Contributors

• Foxandxss
• soygul
• tunnckoCore
• getuliojr
• cesarandreu
• michaelwestphal
• sc0ttyd
• Jackong
• danwkennedy

License

The MIT License