Implement Visitor Authentication using Node and Auth0

In this guide, we will show you how to set up Visitor Authentication using Auth0 and Node.

Prerequisites

git , node , and npm are installed on your computer. Familiarity with the terminal (or command line). You can learn how to install these tools here: Git and Node. NPM is bundled with Node.

Setting up Auth0

First, sign in to Auth0 platform and create a new application (or use an existing one) by clicking the Applications button in the left sidebar. If creating a new application, name it appropriately and choose "Regular Web Application" as the option. We will be using Regular Web Application for the sake of this guide. Click Create.

A quickstart panel will show up. Select Node.js (Express) option and then select "I want to integrate my app." You will see a screen prompting you to configure Auth0. It should look like the image below

Click on Save Settings And Continue.

The rest of this guide requires you to be comfortable working with common developer tools such as git and the terminal (or command prompt if you're on Windows). We will come back to Auth0 in a minute.

Creating the Backend

Now, we will create the backend responsible for authenticating the visitors to your space.

On your computer, clone the git repository by running git clone https://github.com/GitbookIO/auth0-visitor-authentication-example in the directory (folder) you want to be working from. Open the folder in your favorite code editor (say, VS Code).

We will edit the server.js file and enter the details of our Auth0 application there.

Your config object should look like the following right now:

const config = {
  authRequired: false,
  auth0Logout: true,
  secret: 'a long, randomly-generated string', // retrieve it from the environment or enter it here
  baseURL: 'http://localhost:3000',
  clientID: 'clientId copied from Auth0 application', // retrieve it from the environment or enter it here
  issuerBaseURL: 'issuerBaseURL copied from Auth0 application' // retrieve it from the environment or enter it here
};

You will also find a config object on the Auth0 page you were on.

If you're not seeing the Configure Router page shown below and are still seeing the Configure Auth0 prompt, you might have to click on Save Settings and Continue again to get to this page.

Copy the config object from this page and replace the config object in your code editor with this.

In your code editor, for the secret field in the config object, you can choose one yourself or you can generate a new secret by using the terminal. Open the terminal app on your computer and run openssl rand -hex 32. This will generate a secret that you can enter as the value for the secret. You can hardcode it directly in the code or you can retrieve it from env (recommended for production use. In this demo, we will hardcode this value.)

Your config object in your code editor should now look something like this:

const config = {
  authRequired: false,
  auth0Logout: true,
  secret: '772e7d8151e0c4ec57de2545b8e8094911824d988c1e185b64d9d9913f894224',
  clientID: 'QMqod2P9Rd6KDw6Fih9Aovzcd4Yp7Ppk',
  issuerBaseURL: 'https://dev-qrt6bk165i3mltdi.us.auth0.com'
};

Note that your secret,clientId, and issuerBaseUrl will be different from the ones shown above.

Setting up Visitor Authentication

Now, we need to use GitBook. Go to the space you want to publish behind visitor authentication. Open the Share modal and click "Share to an audience", and enable the "Publish with Visitor Authentication" toggle.

Make note of the Private key and the Space URL. We will need them.

Enter http://localhost:3000 as the Fallback URL. Click Save.

Go back to your code editor and in the following line

const gitbookSignKey = 'gitbook signing key'

Replace gitbook signing key with the Private key you copied. This line should look something like:

const gitbookSignKey = 'f4dgg2e2-3d35-91d5-aa87-7610egf27b62'

Note that your signing key will be different from the one entered above.

In your code editor, in the following line

const redirectURL = `https://example-url.gitbook.io/example/?jwt_token=${token}`

Replace everything before ? with the Space URL you copied from the GitBook Share modal. Make sure there's only one / right before the ?.

Save the server.js file.

Open up the terminal and make sure you're in the auth0-visitor-authentication-example directory.

Run npm install which will install the dependencies of our project, including the library needed for communicating with Auth0.

After the installation of dependencies is complete, run node server.js from the command line. If successful, you will see the following message:

Example app listening at http://localhost:3000

Your Visitor Authentication setup is now complete! If you visit your published space URL now, you will be prompted to sign in using Auth0.

You can configure how you want users to login (say, with Google/GitHub or with email/password, or with other options like SAML) in the Auth0 Authentication dashboard.