Authentication

FireSync uses JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) for authentication. To grant a user access to FireSync documents you should create a JWT that specifies which documents the user can access. The JWT is signed by a secret that only you and FireSync know, so FireSync can confirm the user is authorized by you.

The JWT should be crated and signed on your backend, where the shared secret is available. Never make the JWT secret available in your client code. Once the token is signed & generated pass it to your client user's client where it can be included with requests to FireSync.

Configure your secret

FireSync Cloud

Your secrets can be found in your project settings in firesync cloud.

FireSync Server

Configure your JWT secret with the FS_JWT_AUTH_SECRET environment variable:

$ export FS_JWT_AUTH_SECRET='/B?E(H+KbPeShVmYq3t6w9zDC&F)J@Nc'

To generate a random secret from the command line you can use openssl:

$ openssl rand -base64 32

Generate a JWT

Node.js

Install the jsonwebtoken library:

$ npm install --save jsonwebtoken

In your backend code sign the token to pass to your frontend client code:

import jwt from "jsonwebtoken";

const payload = {
  docs: {
    // Grant write access to the document called 'foo' and readonly access to 'bar'
    foo: "write",
    bar: "read",
  },
};
const secret = "/B?E(H+KbPeShVmYq3t6w9zDC&F)J@Nc";

// Pass token to your client
const token = jwt.sign(payload, secret);

Python

Install the jwt library:

$ pip install jwt

In your backend code sign the token to pass to your frontend client code:

import jwt

payload = {
  'docs': {
    # Grant write access to the document called 'foo' and readonly access to 'bar'
    'foo': 'write',
    'bar': 'read'
  }
}
secret = '/B?E(H+KbPeShVmYq3t6w9zDC&F)J@Nc'

# Pass token to your client
token = jwt.encode(payload, secret)

print(token)

Configure FireSync Client

Pass the token you have generated on your backend to the frontend client to allow the user access to the specified documents:

FireSync Cloud

import FireSync from "@firesync/client";

const firesync = new FireSync({
  projectName: "acme-dev",
  token: token, // Generated above
});

FireSync Server

import FireSync from "@firesync/client";

const firesync = new FireSync({
  baseUrl: "http://localhost:5000",
  token: token, // Generated above
});