GitHub OAuth in Express

Before starting, make sure you’ve setup Lucia and your database.

This guide will cover how to implement GitHub OAuth using Lucia in Express with session cookies. As a general overview of OAuth, the user is redirected to github.com to be authenticated, and GitHub redirects the user back to your application with a code that can be validated and used to get the user’s identity.

Clone project#

You can get started immediately by cloning the Express example from the repository.

npx degit lucia-auth/examples/express/github-oauth <directory_name>

Alternatively, you can open it in StackBlitz.

Create an OAuth app#

Create a GitHub OAuth app. Set the redirect uri, for example http://localhost:3000/login/github/callback.

Copy and paste the client id and client secret into your .env file:

# .env
GITHUB_CLIENT_ID="..."
GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET="..."

Update your database#

Add a username column to your table. It should be a string (TEXT, VARCHAR etc) type (optionally unique).

Make sure you update Lucia.DatabaseUserAttributes whenever you add any new columns to the user table.

// app.d.ts

/// <reference types="lucia" />
declare namespace Lucia {
	type Auth = import("./lucia.js").Auth;
	type DatabaseUserAttributes = {
		username: string;
	};
	type DatabaseSessionAttributes = {};
}

Configure Lucia#

We’ll expose the user’s GitHub username to the User object by defining getUserAttributes.

// lucia.ts
import { lucia } from "lucia";
import { express } from "lucia/middleware";

export const auth = lucia({
	adapter: ADAPTER,
	env: process.env.NODE_ENV === "development" ? "DEV" : "PROD",
	middleware: express(),

	getUserAttributes: (data) => {
		return {
			githubUsername: data.username
		};
	}
});

export type Auth = typeof auth;

Configure Express#

Set up the body parser middleware.

import express from "express";

const app = express();

app.use(express.urlencoded()); // for application/x-www-form-urlencoded (forms)
app.use(express.json()); // for application/json

Initialize the OAuth integration#

Install the OAuth integration and dotenv.

npm i @lucia-auth/oauth dotenv
pnpm add @lucia-auth/oauth dotenv
yarn add @lucia-auth/oauth dotenv

Import the GitHub OAuth integration, and initialize it using your credentials.

// lucia.ts
import { lucia } from "lucia";
import { express } from "lucia/middleware";

import { github } from "@lucia-auth/oauth/providers";
import dotenv from "dotenv";

dotenv.config();

export const auth = lucia({
	// ...
});

export const githubAuth = github(auth, {
	clientId: process.env.GITHUB_CLIENT_ID ?? "",
	clientSecret: process.env.GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET ?? ""
});

export type Auth = typeof auth;

Generate authorization url#

Create a new GitHub authorization url, where the user should be redirected to. When generating an authorization url, Lucia will also create a new state. This should be stored as a http-only cookie to be used later.

import { auth, githubAuth } from "./lucia.js";

app.get("/login/github", async (req, res) => {
	const [url, state] = await githubAuth.getAuthorizationUrl();
	res.cookie("github_oauth_state", state, {
		httpOnly: true,
		secure: process.env.NODE_ENV === "production",
		path: "/",
		maxAge: 60 * 60 * 1000 // 1 hour
	});
	return res.status(302).setHeader("Location", url.toString()).end();
});

For example, the user should be redirected to /login/github when they click “Sign in with GitHub.”

<a href="/login/github">Sign in with GitHub</a>

Validate callback#

Create your OAuth callback route that you defined when registering an OAuth app with GitHub, and handle GET requests.

When the user authenticates with GitHub, GitHub will redirect back the user to your site with a code and a state. This state should be checked with the one stored as a cookie, and if valid, validate the code with GithubProvider.validateCallback(). This will return GithubUserAuth if the code is valid, or throw an error if not.

After successfully creating a user, we’ll create a new session with Auth.createSession() and store it as a cookie with AuthRequest.setSession(). AuthRequest can be created by calling Auth.handleRequest() with Express’ Request and Response.

You can use parseCookie() provided by Lucia to read the state cookie.

import { auth, githubAuth } from "./lucia.js";
import { parseCookie } from "lucia/utils";
import { OAuthRequestError } from "@lucia-auth/oauth";

app.get("/login/github/callback", async (req, res) => {
	const cookies = parseCookie(req.headers.cookie ?? "");
	const storedState = cookies.github_oauth_state;
	const state = req.query.state;
	const code = req.query.code;
	// validate state
	if (
		!storedState ||
		!state ||
		storedState !== state ||
		typeof code !== "string"
	) {
		return res.sendStatus(400);
	}
	try {
		const { getExistingUser, githubUser, createUser } =
			await githubAuth.validateCallback(code);

		const getUser = async () => {
			const existingUser = await getExistingUser();
			if (existingUser) return existingUser;
			const user = await createUser({
				attributes: {
					username: githubUser.login
				}
			});
			return user;
		};

		const user = await getUser();
		const session = await auth.createSession({
			userId: user.userId,
			attributes: {}
		});
		const authRequest = auth.handleRequest(req, res);
		authRequest.setSession(session);
		return res.status(302).setHeader("Location", "/").end();
	} catch (e) {
		if (e instanceof OAuthRequestError) {
			// invalid code
			return res.sendStatus(400);
		}
		return res.sendStatus(500);
	}
});

Authenticate user with Lucia#

You can check if the user has already registered with your app by checking GithubUserAuth.getExistingUser. Internally, this is done by checking if a key with the GitHub user id already exists.

If they’re a new user, you can create a new Lucia user (and key) with GithubUserAuth.createUser(). The type for attributes property is Lucia.DatabaseUserAttributes, which we added username to previously. You can access the GitHub user data with GithubUserAuth.githubUser, as well as the access tokens with GithubUserAuth.githubTokens.

const { getExistingUser, githubUser, createUser } =
	await githubAuth.validateCallback(code);

const getUser = async () => {
	const existingUser = await getExistingUser();
	if (existingUser) return existingUser;
	const user = await createUser({
		attributes: {
			username: githubUser.login
		}
	});
	return user;
};

const user = await getUser();

Get authenticated user#

You can validate requests and get the current session/user by using AuthRequest.validate(). It returns a Session if the user is authenticated or null if not.

You can see that User.username exists because we defined it with getUserAttributes() configuration.

get("/user", async (req, res) => {
	const authRequest = auth.handleRequest(req, res);
	const session = await authRequest.validate();
	if (session) {
		const user = session.user;
		const username = user.username;
		// ...
	}
	// ...
});

Sign out users#

When logging out users, it’s critical that you invalidate the user’s session. This can be achieved with Auth.invalidateSession(). You can delete the session cookie by overriding the existing one with a blank cookie that expires immediately. This can be created by passing null to Auth.createSessionCookie().

import { auth } from "./lucia.js";

app.post("/logout", async (req, res) => {
	const authRequest = auth.handleRequest(req, res);
	const session = await authRequest.validate();
	if (!session) {
		return res.sendStatus(401);
	}
	await auth.invalidateSession(session.sessionId);
	authRequest.setSession(null);
	// redirect back to login page
	return res.status(302).setHeader("Location", "/login").end();
});