Npm install install install on with the show! Setup Your Authorization Server Next, install the express-generator tool, which is the officially supported bootstrapping tool for quickly getting started with Express.js. PS: If you don’t already have Node.js setup and working on your computer, you can go checkout this link which shows you the best way to get it working regardless of what operating system you’re using. The first thing you need to do is install all the open source tools we’ll be using to build this Node.js site. oidc-middleware, a popular developer library that makes handling authentication using the OpenID Connect protocol simple.Pug, a popular templating language that makes writing HTML a bit simpler.This is what will allow us to create and store cookies that remember who a user is. express-session, a popular session management library.Express.js, the most popular web framework in the Node.js ecosystem.The site will be built using a few different tools (you don’t need to know them already): If you want to see a preview of this project live, you can do so here. The end product of this article looks like this: =) What We’re BuildingĪs I mentioned above, today we’ll be building a simple Node.js site that supports a few key user flows:

If you’ve ever been curious about how web authentication and user security works, you will enjoy this. Today I’m not only going to show you how to quickly build a Node.js website that supports all those things above, I’m going to teach you exactly what’s going on behind the scenes so you fully understand how web authentication works.

Verifying new users when they sign up via email.

Creating password reset workflows that email users a link.Forcing users to be logged in to view a page.Making sure you have the right user attributes defined.As a developer there are a million little things you need to worry about:

Building websites with user authentication and management (login, registration, password reset, etc.), can be a huge pain.

Pug template define attributes