Passport serializeUser() is not called with this authenticate() callback

Question

Using passport.js, I write the route this way so I have access to the MongoDb document userDoc. But, when doing it this way... passport.serializeUser() will never be called and the req object will be missing user.

auth.route('/auth/facebook/callback')
  .get(function(req, res, next) {
    passport.authenticate('facebook', function(err, userDoc, info) {
      if (err) { return next(err); }
      // I don't think !userDoc will ever happen because of mongo upsert
      if (!userDoc) { return res.redirect('/login'); }
      res.cookie('facebookPicUrl', userDoc.value.facebook.picture, {maxAge : 9999999,
        httpOnly: false,
        secure: false,
        signed: false
      });

      res.redirect('http://localhost:9000/users')
    })(req, res, next);
  });

But if I write it this way, the req.user is there as it should be:

auth.route('/auth/facebook/callback')
  .get(passport.authenticate('facebook', { failureRedirect: '/login' }),
       function(req, res) {
      res.redirect('http://localhost:9000/users')
    });

How can I make this to where passport.serializeUser is called and user exists on req and I also have access to the mongoDb object?

Answer 1

Since you are using the custom authentication callback you are responsible for establishing the session.

Note that when using a custom callback, it becomes the application's responsibility to establish a session (by calling req.login()) and send a response.

req.login() assigns the user object to the request object req as req.user once the login operation completes.

You can see for example that in the documentation req.login() is explicitly called in the custom callback:

app.get('/login', function(req, res, next) {
  passport.authenticate('local', function(err, user, info) {
    if (err) { return next(err); }
    if (!user) { return res.redirect('/login'); }
    req.logIn(user, function(err) {
      if (err) { return next(err); }
      return res.redirect('/users/' + user.username);
    });
  })(req, res, next);
});