Node.js 8 the Right Way

Managing User Sessions in Express

In previous chapters, all of our APIs have placed no authentication requirements on the caller, nor made any attempt to link one request with any previous request. For users to have their own book bundles, we need some identifying token that persists between requests. This is a session.

Sessions are most typically implemented by giving each new user a cookie with an ID that links to some backing session data. Subsequent requests made by the user’s browser (also called a user agent) will include the cookie value, allowing the server to update the user’s session information.

In Express, this is all implemented with middleware. You’ll need the express-session and session-file-store modules. Install those ...