Node.js 8 the Right Way

Setting Up Passport

Passport provides authentication middleware for Express-based applications. We’re going to use it to implement social sign-on using three popular platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Google. All three of these offer an OAuth flow for federated authentication, and there are Passport plugins to help simplify the configuration. Even with Passport’s help, configuring all of these services takes some finesse.

Of course, you can use Passport to implement regular old username/password authentication as well, but this introduces new complications, like where to store user identities, how to encrypt passwords, how to support users who have forgotten their passwords, etc. Since users frequently already have an account with at least ...