Choosing the Right Authentication Method for your React Application

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Access management is the cornerstone of the security of most physical infrastructures. One should only grant access to trusted and affiliated individuals, while those who don't have the same clearance should be denied entry. This security method is usually implemented through user authentication, also known as checking user credentials to verify their identity.

The authentication process is typically carried out with the help of a username and password -- this is the most basic form. Everyone knows this: you create an account, select a username and password, and then use those credentials every time you need to log in to that account in the future. The critical assumption here is that only the correct user will have the right credentials and doesn't account for malicious activity, password-sharing, or hacking. Therefore, most major data breaches occurring these days are caused by this primitive authentication method.

A large reason these attacks are so common is that most people don't try to have a unique, complex password for each account they create because that's harder to remember. Therefore, they opt for simple, repetitive passwords. However, that is a bad practice, as one password leak can result in multiple accounts being hacked due to the same passwords. As a result, a person's entire online account portfolio could be at risk. This risk points towards a demand for stricter authentication.

Choosing the Best Authentication Method For Your Application

Source

Authentication can be accomplished in several different ways, and users have a few options from which to choose. For example, companies are increasingly implementing passwordless authentication, which removes the potential security risk of lost or stolen passwords. The term "passwordless" refers to a few distinct authentication techniques that one can use instead of a traditional static password.

You may have already experienced passwordless authentication. Every time you receive a one-time password (OTP) or "magic link" to your email or phone number to log into an account, you are experiencing passwordless authentication. As you can see, this is gaining popularity as people no longer need to create multiple complex passwords -- they just need to have their central accounts as secure as possible and then use those to receive OTPs and magic links.

You may want to implement passwordless authentication in your application. In this article, we'll use Frontegg to demonstrate how to create this login method in a simple way that requires less code.

Implementing a Secure Login Flow in React using Frontegg

Frontegg is a great free platform that allows developers to provide a wide variety of user management features. One of these features is secure authentication, which includes a variety of authentication types such as passwordless login, SSO, and a lot more. Frontegg is an excellent resource for developers. It is designed on a multi-tenant architecture that is the best in its field and offers many unique features, all free of cost.

After you have created an account with Frontegg, it will provide a dashboard detailing all of the services it offers, like authentication and authorization, for example. Because we require authentication services, we will click on it, and various choices will appear in response to our actions. For this demonstration, we will be going for the passwordless login option. This stage is where you can configure styles and any other CSS-related aspects.

We can also choose from social logins such as Facebook, Google, Github, etc.

Let's start by integrating the login panel into our application.

We will be using the Embedded Login using React.

In the first phase, we will be creating a React app. To generate the reach command, use this command:

npx create-react-app  react-app-with-frontegg

Simply navigate to the newly created folder after the folder has been created to install the necessary tools and dependencies. You may install the dependencies by using these commands to go to the folder and install them.

cd react-app-with-frontegg

npm install @frontegg/react react-router-dom

Now that we have the necessary code, let's correctly implement the login panel.

The Frontegg Provider must be wrapped around our root component to work correctly. Include the following code in the index.js file.

import React from  'react';\
import ReactDOM from  'react-dom';\
import App from  './App';\
import  './index.css';

import { FronteggProvider } from  '@frontegg/react';

const contextOptions = {\
baseUrl: 'https://app-yvs5knxxwv8i.frontegg.com',\
};

ReactDOM.render(\
 <FronteggProvider contextOptions={contextOptions}>\
 <App />\
 </FronteggProvider>,\
 document.getElementById('root')\
);

We need to reveal the user context and authentication status to make it possible for users who have not yet authenticated themselves to be sent to the login page. You must insert this code into the app.js file.

import React from  'react';\
import { useAuth } from  '@frontegg/react'

function  App() {\
 const { user, isAuthenticated } = useAuth();\
 return (\
 <div className='App'>\
      {isAuthenticated && (\
 <div>\
 <img src={user.profilePictureUrl} alt={user.name} />\
 <span>{user.name}</span>\
 </div>\
      )}\
 </div>\
  );\
}

export default App;

Once everything is done, just start the npm by using the following command:

npm start

The signup screen will be at http://localhost:3000/account/sign-up

The login screen will be at http://localhost:3000/account/login

If you are already logged in, go to http://localhost:3000/account/logout and log out.

Conclusion

Creating secure login flows can be very challenging as many factors and considerations go into selecting the right login panel and authentication method. If you don't think through the authentication process correctly, you may be compromising your users' data by relying on them too much to ensure security. This risk is why we have covered passwordless implementation for Node applications in this article using Frontegg. You can quickly build a wonderful authentication feature that includes helpful features like social login, and you can do so with minimal coding on your end....