passport-jwt (2024)

A Passport strategy for authenticating with aJSON Web Token.

This module lets you authenticate endpoints using a JSON web token. It isintended to be used to secure RESTful endpoints without sessions.

Supported By

If you want to quickly add secure token-based authentication to Node.js apps, feel free to check out Auth0's Node.js SDK and free plan at auth0.com/developers

Install

npm install passport-jwt

Usage

Configure Strategy

The JWT authentication strategy is constructed as follows:

new JwtStrategy(options, verify)

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

• secretOrKey is a string or buffer containing the secret(symmetric) or PEM-encoded public key (asymmetric) for verifying the token'ssignature. REQUIRED unless secretOrKeyProvider is provided.
• secretOrKeyProvider is a callback in the format function secretOrKeyProvider(request, rawJwtToken, done),which should call done with a secret or PEM-encoded public key (asymmetric) for the given key and request combination.done accepts arguments in the format function done(err, secret). Note it is up to the implementer to decode rawJwtToken.REQUIRED unless secretOrKey is provided.
• jwtFromRequest (REQUIRED) Function that accepts a request as the onlyparameter and returns either the JWT as a string or null. SeeExtracting the JWT from the request formore details.
• issuer: If defined the token issuer (iss) will be verified against thisvalue.
• audience: If defined, the token audience (aud) will be verified againstthis value.
• algorithms: List of strings with the names of the allowed algorithms. For instance, ["HS256", "HS384"].
• ignoreExpiration: if true do not validate the expiration of the token.
• passReqToCallback: If true the request will be passed to the verifycallback. i.e. verify(request, jwt_payload, done_callback).
• jsonWebTokenOptions: passport-jwt is verifying the token using jsonwebtoken.Pass here an options object for any other option you can pass the jsonwebtoken verifier. (i.e maxAge)

verify is a function with the parameters verify(jwt_payload, done)

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

An example configuration which reads the JWT from the httpAuthorization header with the scheme 'bearer':

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

Extracting the JWT from the request

There are a number of ways the JWT may be included in a request. In order to remain as flexible aspossible the JWT is parsed from the request by a user-supplied callback passed in as thejwtFromRequest parameter. This callback, from now on referred to as an extractor,accepts a request object as an argument and returns the encoded JWT string or null.

Included extractors

A number of extractor factory functions are provided in passport-jwt.ExtractJwt. These factoryfunctions return a new extractor configured with the given parameters.

• fromHeader(header_name) creates a new extractor that looks for the JWT in the given httpheader
• fromBodyField(field_name) creates a new extractor that looks for the JWT in the given bodyfield. You must have a body parser configured in order to use this method.
• fromUrlQueryParameter(param_name) creates a new extractor that looks for the JWT in the givenURL query parameter.
• fromAuthHeaderWithScheme(auth_scheme) creates a new extractor that looks for the JWT in theauthorization header, expecting the scheme to match auth_scheme.
• fromAuthHeaderAsBearerToken() creates a new extractor that looks for the JWT in the authorization headerwith the scheme 'bearer'
• fromExtractors([array of extractor functions]) creates a new extractor using an array ofextractors provided. Each extractor is attempted in order until one returns a token.

Writing a custom extractor function

If the supplied extractors don't meet your needs you can easily provide your own callback. Forexample, if you are using the cookie-parser middleware and want to extract the JWT in a cookieyou could use the following function as the argument to the jwtFromRequest option:

var cookieExtractor = function(req) { var token = null; if (req && req.cookies) { token = req.cookies['jwt']; } return token;};// ...opts.jwtFromRequest = cookieExtractor;

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 method of including a JWT in a request depends entirely on the extractorfunction you choose. For example, if you use the fromAuthHeaderAsBearerTokenextractor, you would include an Authorization header in your request with thescheme set to bearer. e.g.

Authorization: bearer JSON_WEB_TOKEN_STRING.....

Migrating

Read the Migration Guide for help upgrading to the latestmajor version of passport-jwt.

Tests

npm installnpm test

To generate test-coverage reports:

npm install -g istanbulnpm run-script testcovistanbul report

License

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2015 Mike Nicholson