NodeJS Express Passport - req.user is undefined

Question

I'm testing authentication in small app using express+passport and trying to do it without sessions. So user have to provide username and password for every action. After authorization (passport.authenticate()) in next middleware request.user is undefined, but passport faq says that "If authentication succeeds, the next handler will be invoked and the req.user property will be set to the authenticated user." What is wrong here?

listing

const express = require('express');
const passport = require('passport');
const LocalStrategy = require('passport-local').Strategy;
const app = express();

app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded({
  extended: true
}));

passport.use('login',
  new LocalStrategy({
      session: false,
      passReqToCallback: true
    },
    (req, username, password, done) => {
      // passport.use(new LocalStrategy((username, password, done) => {
      console.log('  In passport.use(new LocalStrategy...)');
      console.log('req.body = ', req.body);
      console.log('req.user = ', req.user);
      const user = {
        username: username,
        password: password,
      };
      if (user.username === 'Petr' && user.password === '123') {
        console.log('Username and password OK');
        return done(null, user);
      }
      return done(null, false, {
        message: 'Wrong username or password!'
      });
    },
  ),
);

app.post('/', passport.authenticate('login', {
  session: false,
  successRedirect: '/success',
  failureRedirect: '/failure',
}));

app.use('/', (req, res, next) => {
  console.log('  In app.use /');
  console.log('req.body = ', req.body);
  console.log('req.user = ', req.user);  //HERE req.user is undefined!!!
  next();
});

app.use('/', (req, res, next) => {
  console.log('Request at /');
  next();
});
app.use('/success', (req, res, next) => {
  res.send('success');
  next();
});
app.use('/failure', (req, res, next) => {
  res.send('failure');
  next();
});

app.listen(8000, () => {
  console.log('Server "Test" starts at port 8000');
});

Anas M.I Anas M.I · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-13T07:34:43

Have you set up session state for your app? You have to add it like this...

app.use(session({ secret: 'anything' }));
app.use(passport.initialize());
app.use(passport.session());

NodeJS Express Passport - req.user is undefined

1 Answers