2 min read

Secure Authentication

Table of Contents

Secure Authentication distills everything I have learned about building resilient auth systems into a focused reference implementation. The project combines an Express API with a React client, showing how to ship authentication flows that remain secure and ergonomic for users.

Features

  • HTTP-only cookie storage for access and refresh tokens to block XSS-driven token theft
  • Rotating JWT strategy with refresh token rotation, device tracking, and blacklist handling
  • Zod-powered validation and structured error handling for every auth endpoint
  • Production-ready security middleware: rate limiting, helmet, CORS hardening, and CSRF protection
  • React login, register, and password reset screens that consume the API and keep state with React Query

Extras

  • Postman collection and walkthrough docs that explain each request/response cycle
  • Extensive unit tests around token issuance, revocation, and guard middleware
  • Docker Compose scripts to boot the database, API, and client locally in one command

Use this repo as a foundation when you need to spin up authentication quickly or as a learning resource for understanding modern JWT-cookie architectures.