For my new architecture with microservices and Svelte, a vital implementation detail is the authentication and authorization mechanisms. In the last article, there was an example of how to build the signup component and in this example, we take a look at sessions. The final result is basic account creation and authentication support with a JWT token for upstream services.

A quick glance at the authentication API

We use an external service created in API Platform (PHP / Symfony) which allows us to create users and refresh tokens based on user credentials. The refresh token is used for retrieving a JWT token. We will not discuss the details on how to build this API but it is important to understand how it works to follow the rest of the article.

Create user endpoint (signup):

Create refresh token endpoint (login):

The result of calling the endpoint successfully:

{ "@context": "/api/contexts/RefreshToken", "@id": "/api/refresh_tokens/0be45846-b76d-11e9-a437-0242ac120002", "@type": "RefreshToken", "token": "028e818976e38172f47751d8fada5c6adfb897e39bf5c9ee5f6b03e65b791624752aad51dd6338f30a643e18d7f571bc7b67aabd39fc444b69f15061dc754327", "user": "/api/users/73b4c436-b76c-11e9-a437-0242ac120002" }

Then we can add the token to the header to authenticate the user and call the “GET user endpoint” which generates a JWT token:

curl -X GET "http://127.0.0.1:8001/api/users/73b4c436-b76c-11e9-a437-0242ac120002" -H "accept: application/ld+json" -H "REFRESH-TOKEN: 028e818976e38172f47751d8fada5c6adfb897e39bf5c9ee5f6b03e65b791624752aad51dd6338f30a643e18d7f571bc7b67aabd39fc444b69f15061dc754327"

{ "@context": "/api/contexts/User", "@id": "/api/users/73b4c436-b76c-11e9-a437-0242ac120002", "@type": "User", "id": "73b4c436-b76c-11e9-a437-0242ac120002", "jwttoken": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJhdXRoLm5hYWJ1LmNvbSIsImF1ZCI6Indpc3ZpZHMubmwiLCJpYXQiOjE1NjUwMDE2NTcsIm5iZiI6MTU2NTAwMTY1NywiZXhwIjoxNTY1MDAxNzc3fQ.nCXsDOphrMN_v701Ma-8RPQvoTgolEOPbN-USR-kmY0lUe-CfbBxseujnr65j5lZc6B9BBvYYPSh733FnDRKjnZqC015IcUandVfniemfAGFUl-g-rISSKuVOLBx6UEZ2CMVxnS_SroAXUujcMI-p2ASeBbySYQn00AoWPXCmyDwKqZ7AnqsDXIeuGhcGke0-OktrzpPXrV1DfhnFXJw_16m2PfmfF0VAIWyvO-X4DJBiJS039D1hXt-KripS4eXtQLdq95dSdHH61bMCMudbznhEdhymq_ADBocEzgdJiscVpHz3x_seGuNWe7W4b084pT-_UaKqeg-dDT8S_2ypA" }

This JWT token can then be used for authentication in upstream services.

Persistent sessions in Sapper

It is important to understand that Sapper does not have native support for persistent sessions. Sapper is not a standalone framework on NodeJS but Sapper is a middleware component which can be used in almost all other NodeJS Frameworks to have server-side rendering of Svelte pages. The official documentation mentions this:

Note that you will need to use session middleware such as express-session in your app/server.js in order to maintain user sessions or do anything involving authentication. Sapper Doc

So, we will need to use an alternative solution like express-session as we want to persist session to Redis for authentication. A popular NodeJS framework is Express and express-session is a component build for Express. The sapper template uses Polka instead of Express. Polka seems to be a bit more performant but is much less mature than Express (at least in online educational materials). The RealWorld example uses Polka with Express Sessions. However, I choose to use Express.



Here is the relevant logic in the server.js:

const app = express() // Configures the express session. app.use(session({ store: new RedisStore({host: 'redis', port: 6379}), cookie: { maxAge: 604800000, }, secret: 'keyboard cat', resave: false, rolling: true })) // Setting default values and for debugging purposes app.use(function(req, res, next) { console.log(req.session.user); console.log(req.session.refresh_token); if (typeof req.session.user === 'undefined') { req.session.user = false; } next() }) // Initiates Sapper and adds the session variable to the Store. app.use( sapper.middleware({ session: (req, res) => ({ user: req.session.user }) }) )

The “user” value is a boolean which is true when logged in. The session in the Sapper middleware is a Svelte Store. The user value can now be used in Svelte component to show or hide components in index.svelte:

<script context="module"> export function preload(page, { user }) { return { user }; }; </script> <script> import Signup from '../components/Signup.svelte'; import Login from '../components/Login.svelte'; import Logout from '../components/Logout.svelte'; import { stores } from '@sapper/app'; const { session } = stores(); export let user; </script> {#if !user} <Signup/> <Login/> {:else} <Logout/> {/if}

Login component

First, we use a basic form component as described in the signup article. In the submit logic we call the login server route in Sapper.

<script> import { stores } from '@sapper/app'; const { session } = stores(); export let handleSubmit = async function(event) { if(!event.target.checkValidity()) { return; } const response = await fetch("/login", { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Accept': 'application/json', 'Content-Type': 'application/json' }, body: JSON.stringify({email: event.target[0].value, password: event.target[1].value}) }); if (response.status === 201) { // Sets the User to true in the Store so we do not have to refresh the page. session.set({ user: true }); } } </script>

This will try to call the server route /login which does not exist yet. We can create it by adding a login.js file in the routes folder:

const fetch = require('node-fetch') async function login(email, password) { const { AUTH_SERVICE } = process.env; // Calls the external refresh token create endpoint const response = await fetch(AUTH_SERVICE + '/api/refresh_tokens', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Accept': 'application/ld+json', 'Content-Type': 'application/ld+json' }, body: JSON.stringify({email: email, password: password}) }); return await response; } export async function post(req, res, next) { // Call an authenication microservice to handle the authentication. const { AUTH_SERVICE } = process.env; if (AUTH_SERVICE) { const response = await login(req.body.email, req.body.password) res.status(await response.status); if (response.status === 201) { const data = await response.json(); req.session.user = true; req.session.refresh_token = data.token; req.session.rt_id = data["@id"]; res.end(); } ... # error handling } }

We need to install node-fetch to call the external service in the server route. After a successful response which means the credentials are valid, the session is populated with a refresh token and the refresh token id.

We can now use the refresh token to get a new JWT token by suppling the refresh token in the header (not yet implemented). Furthermore, when logging we can call the delete refresh token endpoint with the refresh token in the header for authentication (logging out):



// logout.js (server route) const fetch = require('node-fetch') async function logout(id, refresh_token) { const { AUTH_SERVICE } = process.env; const response = await fetch(AUTH_SERVICE + id, { method: 'DELETE', headers: { 'Accept': 'application/json', 'Content-Type': 'application/json', // Adds the refresh token to the header. 'REFRESH-TOKEN': refresh_token } }); return await response; } export async function del(req, res, next) { // Call an authenication microservice to handle the authentication. const { AUTH_SERVICE } = process.env; if (AUTH_SERVICE) { // Here we can retrieve the information in the Session. const response = await logout(req.session.rt_id, req.session.refresh_token); ...

Discussion

That was quite some work to get simple authentication flow working in Svelte. However, I expect it to be a very powerful solution compared to a monolithic alternative. For example, we can reuse the same authentication service and Svelte components for different projects.

The Sapper routing acts as an API Gateway where all traffic goes through Sapper first, then the authentication of the upstream services is handled in the background. This architecture will also allow calls to multiple separate microservices in one Sapper call.

The session and store mechanic of Svelte seems very useful in where we can control what is stored on the client but we need to combine it with external tools like express-session. Also, do not forget to also change the Store in the Svelte component when changing a value server-side. Furthermore, the Sapper session logic could be more comprehensively documented for Javascript newbies like myself!

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