password

Overview ¶

Package password implements a simple JSON web token based authentication system. It uses BoltDB as a default store for user information.

Background ¶

The package revolves around the password.Authenticator interface. This interface implements only two methods: one for storing passwords, and one for retrieving them. This lets you use any backend to store your users, whether that be an in-memory store, Redis, Postgres, or something else altogether.

Usage ¶

The functions defined in this library are designed to make it as easy as possible to create and authenticate users. They are all designed to be used with HTTP handlers:

// Grab the username and password from the request, and create a new user
// in the user store with those values
http.HandleFunc("/signup", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	username := r.FormValue("Username")
	password := r.FormValue("Password")
	id, _ := password.New(username, password, UserStore)
	w.Write([]byte("New user: "+id))
})
...
// Sign in using a username and password. This will respond with a JSON web
// token if the user authenticates successfully
http.HandleFunc("/signin", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	username := r.FormValue("Username")
	password := r.FormValue("Password")
	password.Authenticate(username, password, w, UserStore)
})
...
// Respond with the user's username. If they don't have a valid JSON web
// token, then this request will fail, saying the client is unauthorized
http.Handle("/whoami", password.Protected(
	func(ctx context.Context, w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		username := ctx.Value("id")
		fmt.Fprintf(w, "Your username: %s\n", username)
}))

In this example, "UserStore" would satisfy the password.Authenticator interface. For a reference implementation of this interface, see the example in the GitHub repository.