Nest & Neo4j Starter Repository

Dependencies

• API: @nest ...
• Neo4j: nest-neo4j
• Authentication: passport, passport-jwt, passport-local

Config

Authentication

Authentication is provided by the AuthModule in src/auth/auth.module.ts. By default the user is identified by their email address and authenticated by their password. You can identify the user by another property

Registration

In order for a user to register, they must send a POST request to /auth/register. The validation rules for this endpoint are defined in the CreateUserDto. By default a user is required to send an email and password, and can also optionally send a firstName and lastName.

The AuthController validates the request and passes the items defined in on the CreateUserDto object to the UserService. The user service then encrypts the password and attempts to create the node inside Neo4j before returning a UserResponse consisting of their UserProperties and token property containing a JWT token containing an object of UserClaims - a signed, Base64 encoded string which represents certain claims about who the user says they are. This information can be used to personalise the UI.

By default everything except the password is returned in the UserClaims - the JWT token can be easily decoded so nothing sensitive should be added to these claims.

To add additional properties to the User record, you will need to add the property (and any additional validation decorators) to the CreateUserDto.

To change the claims or the properties returned by the API, you can edit getClaims() or toJson() methods in the User entity class.

Login

Once registered, a user must send a POST request to /auth/register with their email and password. The endpoint will return the same response as the POST /auth/register endpoint. The token should be stored by the client and sent with any subsequent requests to guarded API routes.

Retrieving User Details

The user's details can be retrieved with a valid JWT token. The information returned by the API is defined in the toJson() method in the User entity class.

Updating a User

The validation for the PUT /auth/user endpoint is taken care of by the UpdateUserDto. Any items defined in the DTO will be updated in Neo4j before an updated JWT is returned.

Guarded Routes

You can use the UseGuards decorator to add the JwtAuthGuard to any route. This will require the user to send a valid JWT token. You can inject the current User entity into the route using the AuthUser decorator:

@UseGuards(JwtAuthGuard)
@Get('user')
getUser(@AuthUser() user) {
    return {
        ...user.toJson(),
        token: this.authService.createToken(user),
    }
}