How to explicitly pass user data to passport.authenticate - express

Question

I'm making a webapp that uses Socket.io to pass information between the server and the client, one example being login information. The documentation for passport.authenticate says to use it like so:
app.post('/login', passport.authenticate('local', { successRedirect: '/',
failureRedirect: '/login' }));
However, my webapp is using Polymer client-side routing, so the only route my index.js has is this:
app.get('*', function (req, res) {
res.sendFile('./public/index.html', {root: '.'});
});
Instead, I'd like to do something like this:
io.on('connection', function(socket){
socket.on('login', function(data){
passport.authenticate('local', data);
});
});
However, this doesn't work as the authenticate function doesn't even get called right now. Is there a way to make passport work in such a scenario?

Answer 1

You can try something like below .
In your routes define and require the socket module, so you have access to use it in routes.
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var server = http.createServer(app);
var io = require('socket.io').listen(server);
var router = express.Router();
var passport = require('passport');
io.on('connection', function(socket){
socket.on('login', function(data){
// call the routes
router.post('/login', function(request, response, next) {
passport.authenticate('local', function(err, user, info) {
if (err) {
// return next(err);
socket.emit('loginResult', { success: false });
}
if (!user) {
var message = "Invalid credentials";
socket.emit('loginResult', { success: false , message: message});
}
request.logIn(user, function (err) {
if (err) {
socket.emit('loginResult', { success: false });
}
// if want to save user in session
request.session.user = user;
// after success code
socket.emit('loginResult', { success: true , user : user});
});
})(request, response, next);
});
});
});
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

You can define your custom callback with passport.authenticate(). I have given a example below, you might wanna try that. Go here for more info.
io.on('connection', function(socket){
socket.on('login', function(data){
var req = {}
req.body = data
passport.authenticate('local', function(err, user, info) {
if (err) {
socket.emit('login', { success: false });
}
if (!user) {
socket.emit('login', { success: false });
}
// Set session
req.logIn(user, function(err) {
if (err) {
socket.emit('login', { success: false });
}
socket.emit('login', { success: true });
});
});
});
Update: Problem with previous code was, when using custom callbacks in passport authenticate it uses req object from the closure, which in this case was undefined as it was not in the router. I think, now that you can provide enough authentication data through req.body it should work.