ReactJs frontend & Passport NodeJs backend

Question

I am building a project which is API RESTful with NodeJS, Express & Passport. And for the Frontend of this application I want to use ReactJS.

Can I create a separate project with create-app-react for my frontend and fetch my API while keeping the benefits of Passport ? Or I should send always the user's information in my request? Or serve my Frontend on the same server of the API?

Answer 1

Yes, you can have a client & a server on 2 differents port, and keep the benefits of Passport.

But for that, when you fetch you API use credentials : 'include'

Because, by default, fetch won't send or receive any cookies from the server, resulting in unauthenticated requests if the site relies on maintaining a user session (to send cookies, the credentials init option must be set).

Example:

fetch('https://example.com', {
  credentials: 'include'  
})
.then( res => {
  // Some stuff...
})
.catch(err => {
  console.log(err);
});