Authentication

Production-ready authentication patterns and best practices.

Overview

This playbook covers:

• Session vs JWT authentication
• OAuth providers integration
• Password security
• Multi-factor authentication

Session-Based Auth

Session-based authentication stores session data on the server.

Pros:

• Easy to invalidate sessions
• More secure by default
• Session data stays on server

Cons:

• Requires server state
• Harder to scale horizontally

JWT Authentication

JSON Web Tokens are stateless authentication tokens.

Pros:

• Stateless and scalable
• Works well with microservices
• Can contain user claims

Cons:

• Cannot be easily invalidated
• Token size can grow large
• Requires careful security considerations

Best Practices

1. Use HTTPS everywhere - Never transmit credentials over HTTP
2. Hash passwords - Use bcrypt or Argon2 for password hashing
3. Implement rate limiting - Prevent brute force attacks
4. Use secure cookies - Set HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite flags
5. Validate on server - Never trust client-side validation alone

Recommended Libraries

• BetterAuth - Modern, type-safe authentication framework
• NextAuth.js - Full-featured auth for Next.js
• Lucia - Simple, lightweight auth library
• Clerk - Managed authentication service
• Auth0 - Enterprise auth solution