Node Express Application with Okta Authentication

This example shows how to create a website in Node and Express that uses Okta for authentication. The application was bootstrapped with Express Generator. You can see it online at https://okta-node-express-example.herokuapp.com.

Please read Simple Node Authentication to see how this application was created, and How to Securely Manage Users in Your Node App to see how the user profile page was created.

Getting Started

To install this example application, run the following commands:

git clone [email protected]:oktadeveloper/okta-node-express-example.git
cd okta-node-express-example

This will get a copy of the project install locally. You will need to set up some environment variables before the app will run properly.

To integrate Okta's Identity Platform for user authentication, you'll first need to:

• Sign up for a free Okta Developer account
• You will get a URL similar to https://dev-123456.oktapreview.com.
  • Save this URL for later
  • You will also use this URL to login to your Okta account

You will need to create an application in Okta:

• Log in to your Okta account, then navigate to Applications and click the Add Application button
• Select Web and click Next
• Give your application a name (e.g. "Simple Node Authentication")
• Change the Base URI to http://localhost:3000 and the Login redirect URI to http://localhost:3000/authorization-code/callback, then click Done
• Save your client ID and client secret for later

Your Okta application should have settings similar to the following:

You will also need two API tokens:

• Log in to your Okta account, then navigate to API > Tokens and click the Create Token button
• Enter a name that will help you remember what this is used for
  • The first one will be for registering users, so a name like "Registration" would work here
  • The second token will be for fetching and editing user profiles, so you could call it something like "User Profiles"
• Save the provided token value for later
  • This will only be displayed once. If you lose it, you will need to create another API token
• Repeat this process for the next token

Now create a file called .env in the project root and add the following variables, replacing the values with your own from the previous steps.

HOST_URL=http://localhost:3000
ORG_URL=https://dev-123456.oktapreview.com
CLIENT_ID=okta-application-client-id
CLIENT_SECRET=okta-application-client-secret
REGISTRATION_TOKEN=okta-registration-api-token
USER_PROFILE_TOKEN=okta-user-profile-api-token
APP_SECRET=something-random

One way to get a random APP_SECRET is to use the following command line, which will generate a random value and add it to your .env file.

echo "APP_SECRET=`openssl rand -base64 32`" >> .env

The app also assumes users have birthdate and favoriteColor custom user attributes. Those need to be added from the Okta Developer Console by going to Users > Profile Editor, then click the Profile button on the profile labeled User. Click Add Attribute, then give it a display name like Birth Date and a variable name of birthdate (case sensitive). Click Save and Add Another to add another one with the variable name favoriteColor, then click Save. The rest of the options can stay at the default.

Now run the application:

npm install
npm start

If you want to run the application in development mode so that any changes you make automatically restart the web server, instead of npm start use the command npm run dev.

Links

Here are some links that were helpful in the creation of this example:

• Libraries
  • Okta OpenID Connect Middleware
  • Okta Node SDK
  • Express
• Tools
  • Express Application Generator
• Blogs
  • Build User Registration with Node, React, and Okta
  • Build a Basic CRUD App with Vue.js and Node

Help

Please post any questions as comments on the blog post, or visit our Okta Developer Forums. You can also email [email protected] if would like to create a support ticket.

License

Apache 2.0, see LICENSE.