Express redirect after login authentication

Question

I'm working on an app which has node.js and express on the server, mongodb for the db and Backbone.js on the front-end. I'm working on enabling user logins, so I've used the passport.js library. I have a problem with my login 'post' method: It is not redirecting to another page (well it's an SPA, so I mean rendering a Backbone view). Here's the code:

//standard express setup...

app.post('/api/auth', function(req, res, next) {
  passport.authenticate('local', function(err, user, info) {
    if (err) { return next(err) }
    if (!user) {
      req.session.messages =  [info.message];
      return res.redirect('/')
    }
    req.logIn(user, function(err) {
      if (err) { 
    return next(err); 
  } else {
            console.log('yup, working'); //Can see the response in the console
    return res.redirect('/api'); 
  }
});
  })(req, res, next);
});

app.get('/api', function (request, response) {
  response.send( 'Login successful!' );
});

So I can see the console.log message fine, and a GET request for the route IS triggered...but nothing actually happens. So I'm thinking that I've misunderstood how 'res.redirect' works - I want to navigate to that route upon the login success. I've thought about using window.location, but is this a good long-term solution? I'm not using any html templates on the server, so I can't (I don't think) do something as simple as 'res.render('index')'

What would be the best way to approach this? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I had a face-palm moment a few days after asking this question where I realized I had failed to grasp a core concept correctly. Let me answer my own question:

Rather than trying to serve the page from the server, I just need to send a response to the client and have Backbone do the rendering, depending on the response received. So my server does something more like this:

controller.post('/user', function(req, res, next) {
  passport.authenticate('local', function(err, user, info) {
    if (err) { return next(err) }
      user.save(function(err) {
    if(err){
        console.log(err);
        return res.json(401);
    } else {
        return res.json(200); //SEND RESPONSE - do not try to redirect
    }
  });

Then I do the page loading in the Backbone View, like this:

login: function (e) {
  e.preventDefault();
  console.log('submitting login request');
  var formValues = {
    username: $('#inputEmail').val(),
    password: $('#inputPassword').val()
  };

  var user = new User(); //user model
  user.set(formValues);

  function saveUserfunction (){
    if(user) {
        user.save(this.formValues, {
            success: function(model, response, options) {
                if (response == 200) { 
                    console.log('success :' + response);
                    window.location.href = 'http://localhost:4711/#/api/menu_auth'; //Here's my redirect - the router is listening for this route and will render accordingly
                } else {
                    console.log('error: '+response);
                }

            }, error: //Error handling etc.

As Pheonix pointed out in the comments, the best way to do this would be to listen to the the user model.