Nuxt Auth Utils

Add Authentication to Nuxt applications with secured & sealed cookies sessions.

• Release Notes
• Demo

Features

• Hybrid Rendering support (SSR / CSR / SWR / Prerendering)
• 15+ OAuth Providers
• Vue composable
• Server utils
• <AuthState> component
• Extendable with hooks

It has few dependencies (only from UnJS), run on multiple JS environments (Node, Deno, Workers) and is fully typed with TypeScript.

Requirements

This module only works with a Nuxt server running as it uses server API routes (nuxt build).

This means that you cannot use this module with nuxt generate.

You can anyway use Hybrid Rendering to pre-render pages of your application or disable server-side rendering completely.

Quick Setup

1. Add nuxt-auth-utils in your Nuxt project

npx nuxi@latest module add auth-utils

2. Add a NUXT_SESSION_PASSWORD env variable with at least 32 characters in the .env.

# .env
NUXT_SESSION_PASSWORD=password-with-at-least-32-characters

Nuxt Auth Utils generates one for you when running Nuxt in development the first time if no NUXT_SESSION_PASSWORD is set.

3. That's it! You can now add authentication to your Nuxt app ✨

Vue Composable

Nuxt Auth Utils automatically adds some plugins to fetch the current user session to let you access it from your Vue components.

User Session

<script setup>
const { loggedIn, user, session, fetch, clear } = useUserSession()
</script>

<template>
  <div v-if="loggedIn">
    <h1>Welcome {{ user.login }}!</h1>
    <p>Logged in since {{ session.loggedInAt }}</p>
    <button @click="clear">Logout</button>
  </div>
  <div v-else>
    <h1>Not logged in</h1>
    <a href="/auth/github">Login with GitHub</a>
  </div>
</template>

TypeScript Signature:

interface UserSessionComposable {
  /**
   * Computed indicating if the auth session is ready
   */
  ready: ComputedRef<boolean>
  /**
   * Computed indicating if the user is logged in.
   */
  loggedIn: ComputedRef<boolean>
  /**
   * The user object if logged in, null otherwise.
   */
  user: ComputedRef<User | null>
  /**
   * The session object.
   */
  session: Ref<UserSession>
  /**
   * Fetch the user session from the server.
   */
  fetch: () => Promise<void>
  /**
   * Clear the user session and remove the session cookie.
   */
  clear: () => Promise<void>
}

Server Utils

The following helpers are auto-imported in your server/ directory.

Session Management

// Set a user session, note that this data is encrypted in the cookie but can be decrypted with an API call
// Only store the data that allow you to recognize a user, but do not store sensitive data
// Merges new data with existing data using defu()
await setUserSession(event, {
  user: {
    // ... user data
  },
  loggedInAt: new Date()
  // Any extra fields
})

// Replace a user session. Same behaviour as setUserSession, except it does not merge data with existing data
await replaceUserSession(event, data)

// Get the current user session
const session = await getUserSession(event)

// Clear the current user session
await clearUserSession(event)

// Require a user session (send back 401 if no `user` key in session)
const session = await requireUserSession(event)

You can define the type for your user session by creating a type declaration file (for example, auth.d.ts) in your project to augment the UserSession type:

// auth.d.ts
declare module '#auth-utils' {
  interface User {
    // Add your own fields
  }

  interface UserSession {
    // Add your own fields
  }
}

export {}

OAuth Event Handlers

All handlers can be auto-imported and used in your server routes or API routes.

The pattern is oauth<Provider>EventHandler({ onSuccess, config?, onError? }), example: oauthGitHubEventHandler.

The helper returns an event handler that automatically redirects to the provider authorization page and then calls onSuccess or onError depending on the result.

The config can be defined directly from the runtimeConfig in your nuxt.config.ts:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  runtimeConfig: {
    oauth: {
      // provider in lowercase (github, google, etc.)
      <provider>: {
        clientId: '...',
        clientSecret: '...'
      }
    }
  }
})

It can also be set using environment variables:

• NUXT_OAUTH_<PROVIDER>_CLIENT_ID
• NUXT_OAUTH_<PROVIDER>_CLIENT_SECRET

Provider is in uppercase (GITHUB, GOOGLE, etc.)

Supported OAuth Providers

• Auth0
• AWS Cognito
• Battle.net
• Discord
• Facebook
• GitHub
• Google
• Keycloak
• LinkedIn
• Microsoft
• PayPal
• Spotify
• Steam
• Twitch
• X (Twitter)
• XSUAA
• Yandex

You can add your favorite provider by creating a new file in src/runtime/server/lib/oauth/.

Example

Example: ~/server/routes/auth/github.get.ts

export default oauthGitHubEventHandler({
  config: {
    emailRequired: true
  },
  async onSuccess(event, { user, tokens }) {
    await setUserSession(event, {
      user: {
        githubId: user.id
      }
    })
    return sendRedirect(event, '/')
  },
  // Optional, will return a json error and 401 status code by default
  onError(event, error) {
    console.error('GitHub OAuth error:', error)
    return sendRedirect(event, '/')
  },
})

Make sure to set the callback URL in your OAuth app settings as <your-domain>/auth/github.

Extend Session

We leverage hooks to let you extend the session data with your own data or log when the user clears the session.

// server/plugins/session.ts
export default defineNitroPlugin(() => {
  // Called when the session is fetched during SSR for the Vue composable (/api/_auth/session)
  // Or when we call useUserSession().fetch()
  sessionHooks.hook('fetch', async (session, event) => {
    // extend User Session by calling your database
    // or
    // throw createError({ ... }) if session is invalid for example
  })

  // Called when we call useServerSession().clear() or clearUserSession(event)
  sessionHooks.hook('clear', async (session, event) => {
    // Log that user logged out
  })
})

Server-Side Rendering

You can make authenticated requests both from the client and the server. However, you must use useRequestFetch() to make authenticated requests during SSR if you are not using useFetch()

<script setup lang="ts">
// When using useAsyncData
const { data } = await useAsyncData('team', () => useRequestFetch()('/api/protected-endpoint'))

// useFetch will automatically use useRequestFetch during SSR
const { data } = await useFetch('/api/protected-endpoint')
</script>

There's an open issue to include credentials in $fetch in Nuxt.

Hybrid Rendering

When using Nuxt routeRules to prerender or cache your pages, Nuxt Auth Utils will not fetch the user session during prerendering but instead fetch it on the client-side (after hydration).

This is because the user session is stored in a secure cookie and cannot be accessed during prerendering.

This means that you should not rely on the user session during prerendering.

<AuthState> component

You can use the <AuthState> component to safely display auth-related data in your components without worrying about the rendering mode.

One common use case if the Login button in the header:

<template>
  <header>
    <AuthState v-slot="{ loggedIn, clear }">
      <button v-if="loggedIn" @click="clear">Logout</button>
      <NuxtLink v-else to="/login">Login</NuxtLink>
    </AuthState>
  </header>
</template>

If the page is cached or prerendered, nothing will be rendered until the user session is fetched on the client-side.

You can use the placeholder slot to show a placeholder on server-side and while the user session is being fetched on client-side for the prerendered pages:

<template>
  <header>
    <AuthState>
      <template #default="{ loggedIn, clear }">
        <button v-if="loggedIn" @click="clear">Logout</button>
        <NuxtLink v-else to="/login">Login</NuxtLink>
      </template>
      <template #placeholder>
        <button disabled>Loading...</button>
      </template>
    </AuthState>
  </header>
</template>

If you are caching your routes with routeRules, please make sure to use nitro-nightly or Nitro >= 2.10.0 to support the client-side fetching of the user session.

Configuration

We leverage runtimeConfig.session to give the defaults option to h3 useSession.

You can overwrite the options in your nuxt.config.ts:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  modules: ['nuxt-auth-utils'],
  runtimeConfig: {
    session: {
      maxAge: 60 * 60 * 24 * 7 // 1 week
    }
  }
})

Our defaults are:

{
  name: 'nuxt-session',
  password: process.env.NUXT_SESSION_PASSWORD || '',
  cookie: {
    sameSite: 'lax'
  }
}

Checkout the SessionConfig for all options.

More

• nuxt-authorization: Authorization module for managing permissions inside a Nuxt app, compatible with nuxt-auth-utils

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Generate type stubs
npm run dev:prepare

# Develop with the playground
npm run dev

# Build the playground
npm run dev:build

# Run ESLint
npm run lint

# Run Vitest
npm run test
npm run test:watch

# Release new version
npm run release