This is a very basic example of a custom authentication implementation using an external backend API (using express) and nextjs.

Demo

Start the backend API:

cd back/
npm install
npm run dev

Start the nextjs app:

cd front/
cp .env.sample .env
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 with your browser and register an account.

Implementation details

• This is a very basic implementation of register/signin flow. You should add proper validation in the different endpoints.
• Using an in memory "DB" to store the user. You might want to change that.
• accessToken are never invalidated on the backend API. You might want to support that.
• Session only contains the email and accessToken. You might want to include other things like roles, ...
• Sessions are encrypted and stored in a jwt token in a cookie. This is the reason why we proxy the register/signin calls from client -> next server api -> external backend api
• When calling a backend protected endpoint, use the Authorization: 'Bearer session.accessToken' either from useSession() for client components or from getServerSession() for server components.

Questions & feedback?

Twitter: @kdelemme