passport-loopback3

Loopback 3 Authentication strategy for Passport, based on http-bearer.

Loopback 3's authentication model is very close to, but not exactly the same as, HTTP bearer tokens, as specified by RFC 6750. Specifically, while RFC 6750 specifies the authentication heading to be:

Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN

Loopback omits the Bearer keyword, and so the header would look like this:

Authorization: $TOKEN

Loopback also supports access_token URL parameters in exactly the same way HTTP Bearer.

This strategy supports both Loopback and RFC 6750 style authentication headers.

By plugging into Passport, bearer token support can be easily and unobtrusively integrated into any application or framework that supports Connect-style middleware, including Express.

Usage

Configure Strategy

The HTTP Bearer authentication strategy authenticates users using a bearer token. The strategy requires a verify callback, which accepts that credential and calls done providing a user. Optional info can be passed, typically including associated scope, which will be set by Passport at req.authInfo to be used by later middleware for authorization and access control.

passport.use(new BearerStrategy(
  function(token, done) {
    User.findOne({ token: token }, function (err, user) {
      if (err) { return done(err); }
      if (!user) { return done(null, false); }
      return done(null, user, { scope: 'all' });
    });
  }
));

Authenticate Requests

Use passport.authenticate(), specifying the 'bearer' strategy, to authenticate requests. Requests containing bearer tokens do not require session support, so the session option can be set to false.

For example, as route middleware in an Express application:

app.get('/profile', 
  passport.authenticate('bearer', { session: false }),
  function(req, res) {
    res.json(req.user);
  });

Issuing Tokens

Bearer tokens are typically issued using OAuth 2.0. OAuth2orize is a toolkit for implementing OAuth 2.0 servers and issuing bearer tokens. Once issued, this module can be used to authenticate tokens as described above.

Making authenticated requests

The HTTP Bearer authentication strategy authenticates requests based on a bearer token contained in the:

• Authorization header field where the value is in the format {scheme} {token} and scheme is "Bearer" in this case.
• or access_token body parameter
• or access_token query parameter

Examples

For a complete, working example, refer to the Bearer example.

Related Modules

• OAuth2orize — OAuth 2.0 authorization server toolkit

License

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2011-2013 Jared Hanson <http://jaredhanson.net/>