React: Authentication

Learn how to add user authentication into React apps, including email verification, password resets, and best practices.

Introduction

• Take advantage of React authentication
• What you should know
• The structure of this course

1. User Authentication Basics

• What is user authentication?
• Basic project setup
• Building a login page
• Building a sign-up page
• Creating private React routes
• JSON Web Token basics
• Adding a sign-up route to the server
• Generating JSON Web Tokens
• Adding a login route to the server
• Implementing JWTs on the front end
• Adding JWTs to sign-up page
• Adding JWTs to login page
• Adding an update user route
• Verifying JSON Web Tokens
• Adding JWTs to the user info page
• Adding logout functionality

2. Email Verification

• The basic email verification process
• Setting up an email provider
• Sending emails from Node
• Integrating verification tokens
• Creating a verify email page
• Adding a verify email route
• Creating a verification landing page
• Handling successful and failed verifications

3. Resetting Passwords

• The basic password reset process
• Adding a forgot password page
• Sending a reset password email
• Creating a reset password landing page
• Handling password reset success and failure
• Adding a reset password server endpoint

4. OAuth

• OAuth basics
• Setting up OAuth on Google
• Adding an OAuth URL route
• Creating a "Sign in with Google" button
• Loading user info from Google
• Creating new users from OAuth data
• Adding an OAuth callback route
• Handling successful OAuth authentication

5. Prebuilt Authentication Options

• Amazon Cognito basics
• Setting up an AWS Cognito project
• Creating a user pool in Node.js
• Converting the sign-up endpoint to AWS
• Converting the sign-up page to AWS
• Modifying the email verification flow
• Converting the verify email route
• Converting the login route
• Converting the forgot password route
• Rewriting the reset password endpoint
• Converting the reset password page

6. Best Practices

• Using HTTPS and SSL
• Salting and peppering passwords
• Never trust the front end
• Authentication error handling
• Catching and handling errors
• Securing your database

Conclusion

• Conclusion and next steps