passport-magic-login

!passport-magic-login

Passwordless authentication with magic links for Passport.js 🔑

- User signup and login without passwords
- Supports magic links sent via email, SMS or any other method you prefer
- User interface agnostic: all you need is an input and a confirmation screen
- Handles secure token generation, expiration and confirmation

Originally implemented by Tobias Lins for Splitbee and eventually extracted for Feedback Fish:

Usage

To use magic link authentication, you have to:

1. Setup the Passport strategy and Express routes on your server
2. POST a request with the users email or phone number from the client once they have entered it into the login input

$3

``
npm install passport-magic-login
`

$3

This is what the usage from the frontend looks like once you've set it all up. It only requires a single request:

`JS
// POST a request with the users email or phone number to the server
fetch(/auth/magiclogin, {
method: POST,
body: JSON.stringify({
// destination is required.
destination: email,
// However, you can POST anything in your payload and it will show up in your verify() method
name: name,
}),
headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' }
})
.then(res => res.json())
.then(json => {
if (json.success) {
// The request successfully completed and the email to the user with the
// magic login link was sent!
// You can now prompt the user to click on the link in their email
// We recommend you display json.code in the UI (!) so the user can verify
// that they're clicking on the link for their _current_ login attempt
document.body.innerText = json.code
}
})
`

$3

To make this work so easily, you first need to setup passport-magic-login:

`JS
import MagicLoginStrategy from "passport-magic-login"

// IMPORTANT: ALL OPTIONS ARE REQUIRED!
const magicLogin = new MagicLoginStrategy({
// Used to encrypt the authentication token. Needs to be long, unique and (duh) secret.
secret: process.env.MAGIC_LINK_SECRET,

// The authentication callback URL
callbackUrl: "/auth/magiclogin/callback",

// Called with th e generated magic link so you can send it to the user
// "destination" is what you POST-ed from the client
// "href" is your confirmUrl with the confirmation token,
// for example "/auth/magiclogin/confirm?token="
sendMagicLink: async (destination, href) => {
await sendEmail({
to: destination,
body: Click this link to finish logging in: https://yourcompany.com${href}
})
},

// Once the user clicks on the magic link and verifies their login attempt,
// you have to match their email to a user record in the database.
// If it doesn't exist yet they are trying to sign up so you have to create a new one.
// "payload" contains { "destination": "email" }
// In standard passport fashion, call callback with the error as the first argument (if there was one)
// and the user data as the second argument!
verify: (payload, callback) => {
// Get or create a user with the provided email from the database
getOrCreateUserWithEmail(payload.destination)
.then(user => {
callback(null, user)
})
.catch(err => {
callback(err)
})
}


// Optional: options passed to the jwt.sign call (https://github.com/auth0/node-jsonwebtoken#jwtsignpayload-secretorprivatekey-options-callback)
jwtOptions: {
expiresIn: "2 days",
}
})

// Add the passport-magic-login strategy to Passport
passport.use(magicLogin)
`

Once you've got that, you'll then need to add a couple of routes to your Express server:

`JS
// This is where we POST to from the frontend
app.post("/auth/magiclogin", magicLogin.send);

// The standard passport callback setup
app.get(magicLogin.callbackUrl, passport.authenticate("magiclogin"));
``

That's it, you're ready to authenticate! 🎉

License

Licensed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more information!