Building Enterprise JavaScript Applications

Keeping users authenticated

Now that our API server can authenticate users, what identifier should we return to the client so they can attach it in subsequent requests? Generally, there are two types of identifiers:

• Sessions IDs: After the client has successfully authenticated, the server assigns this client a session ID, stores the session ID in the database, and returns it to the client. This session ID is simply a long, randomly generated text that is used to identify the user's session. When the client sends a request and supplies the session ID, the server searches its database for a user with that session, and assumes that the client is the user associated with that session ID. The idea is that because the string is long and random ...