User Authentication with Passport Clinic

---

Important Items to Note

• Important: you need to create a .env file in your server folder. Then copy the secret key in your .env.example file and place a UUI string inside. This can be any string technically.
  • https://www.uuidgenerator.net/version1
• Be sure to restart your server when done (anytime you edit the .env file)

Our config file and addExpressSession middleware use this key to encyrpt your auth strategy.

General Tidbits

• You can expand upon the error handling in the sign-in/sign-up forms if you wish!

• You can update the current-user endpoint to be less noisy if you want, but otherwise expect a 401 error before users are signed in (this should prevent functionality, and is expected)

---

Agenda of Items Covered

Signing Up

• Mostly a simple form, with extra validations
• We redirect on submit, user should be stored in a session at this point
• Posts to usersRouter, and logs them in

Signing In

• Also mostly a standard form
• Posts to the userSessions router
• Despite advanced looking logic, this just checks that user credentials via passportStrategy, and then logs you in if correct

Signing Out

• A delete request that calls passports logout method

Accessing the current user

• Once logged in, req.user will be where your authenticated user information is stored on the backend
• On the frontend, userSession state is managed above your react router routes (otherwise we would have to get the user from the backend with every page)
• Alternative Route rendering is needed to get some state passed as a prop to a child
• Our AuthenticatedRoute is a Launch implementation of passing this down
• Use AuthenticatedRoute for pages where a user MUST be signed in
• Use rendering with components as a child of Route for pages where we want the user info, but you don;t need to be logged in

Using Authenticated Route

• Passing User down as a prop