Userbin for Node.js

Userbin for Node.js adds user authentication, login flows and user management to your Connect- or Express-based app.

Userbin provides a set of login, signup, and password reset forms that drop right into your application without any need of styling or writing markup. Connect your users via traditional logins or third party social networks. We take care of linking accounts across networks, resetting passwords, and keeping everything safe and secure.

Create a free account at Userbin to start accepting users in your application.

Installation

1. Install the userbin package.

   $ npm install userbin

2. Include the Userbin node packages in your app.js or server.js.

   var userbin = require('userbin');

3. Configure the Userbin module with the credentials you got from signing up.

   userbin.config({
     appId: 'YOUR_APP_ID',
     apiSecret: 'YOUR_API_SECRET'
   });

   If you don't configure the appId and apiSecret, the USERBIN_APP_ID and USERBIN_API_SECRET environment variables will be used instead. This may come in handy on Heroku.

4. Insert the Userbin middleware after the cookieParser (and add the cookieParser if not present):

   app.use(connect.cookieParser());  // or express.cookieParser()
   app.use(userbin.authenticate());

Usage

Forms

An easy way to integrate Userbin is via the Widget, which will take care of building forms, validating input and provides a drop-in design that adapts nicely to all devices.

The Widget is fairly high level, so remember that you can still use Userbin with your own forms if it doesn't fit your use-case.

The following links will open up the Widget with the login or the signup form respectively.

<a class="ub-login">Log in</a>

<a class="ub-signup">Sign up</a>

The logout link will clear the session and redirect the user back to your root path:

<a class="ub-logout">Log out</a>

The current user

Express

Userbin keeps track of the currently logged in user which can be accessed in your controllers and views through the global currentUser property.

Welcome to your account, #{currentUser.email}

To check if a user is logged in, use userLoggedIn.

if userLoggedIn
  You are logged in!

Connect

In Connect the currently logged in user is accessed through the req.currentUser property which needs to be explicitly passed to your views.

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.render('home', {currentUser: req.currentUser});
});

Configuration

The call to userbin.config supports a range of options additional to the Userbin credentials. None of the following options are mandatory.

protectedPath

By default, Userbin reloads the current page on a successful login. If you set the protectedPath option, users will be redirected to this path instead.

Once set, this path and any sub-path of it will be protected from unauthenticated users by instead rendering a login form.

userbin.config({ protectedPath: '/dashboard' })

rootPath

By default, Userbin redirects the users to your root path after logging out. If you want to override this behavior, you can set the rootPath option:

userbin.config({ rootPath: '/login' })

createUser and findUser

By default, currentUser will reference a limited Userbin profile, enabling you to work without a database. If you override the functions createUser and findUser, the current user will instead reference one of your models. The profile object is an extended Userbin profile. For more information about the available attributes in the profile see the Userbin profile documentation.

userbin.config({
  createUser: function(profile, done) {
    var user = User.new({
      userbinId         : profile.id,
      email             : profile.email,
      photo             : profile.image
    });
    user.save(function(err, user) {
      done(user);
    });
  },
 
  findUser: function(userbinId, done) {
    User.findOne({ userbinId: userbinId }, function(err, user) {
      done(user);
    });
  }
})

skipScriptInjection

By default, the Userbin middleware will automatically insert a <script> tag before the closing </body> in your HTML files in order to handle forms, sessions and user tracking. This script loads everything asynchronously, so it won't affect your page load speed. However if you want to have control of this procedure, set skipScriptInjection to true and initialize the library yourself. To do that, checkout the Userbin.js configuration guide.

userbin.config({ skipScriptInjection: true });

Further configuration and customization

Your Userbin dashboard gives you access to a range of functionality:

• Configure the appearance of the login widget to feel more integrated with your service
• Connect 10+ OAuth providers like Facebook, Github and Google.
• Use Markdown to generate mobile-ready transactional emails
• Invite users to your application
• See who is logging in and when
• User management: block, remove and impersonate users
• Export all your user data from Userbin

Documentation

For complete documentation go to userbin.com/docs