User Migration: The Definitive Guide
Migrating sensitive user data from one system to another can be difficult (to say the least). While making incremental changes in your codebase to get rid of technical debt can be easy, replacing (or upgrading) something as critical and deeply-intertwined as your user management system can be a nightmare. In this guide, you’ll learn the best strategies and methods for migrating your user accounts from one backend to another in the simplest (and most secure)...
Modern Token Authentication in Node with Express
Token authentication is the hottest way to authenticate users to your web applications nowadays. There’s a lot of interest in token authentication because it can be faster than traditional session-based authentication in some scenarios, and also allows you some additional flexibility. In this post, I’m going to teach you all about token authentication: what it is, how it works, why you should use it, and how you can use it in your Node applications. Let’s...
Use Angular Schematics to Simplify Your Life
When I first started to learn Angular (it was called Angular 2 at the time), I was appalled by the number of files you needed to create to get a basic "Hello, World" example working. As Angular matured, a lot of this pain went away thanks to Angular CLI. Angular CLI is a command-line tool that generates a basic Angular project for you. In its 7.0 release, it started asking you questions about your application....
Welcome Micah Silverman
My name is Micah Silverman and I just joined the Developer Advocacy team at Okta. TL;DR - There are some easter eggs in this post. If you want to know what they’re all about - jump to the bottom. Funny thing is, I’ve been working for Okta for 2 years now, just on different teams. It was in the Sales Engineering and Education Services teams that I learned all the ins and outs of the...
Build Secure Login for Your Angular App
Single page applications (SPAs) are becoming more and more popular. Their appeal is obvious. Fast loading times gives users the feeling of responsiveness even over slow networks. At some point, a developer of a SPA has to think about authentication and authorization. But what do these two terms actually mean? Authentication deals with ensuring that a user truly is who they claim to be. This usually involves a login page in which the user provides...
If It Ain't TypeScript It Ain't Sexy
A few years ago I got “Jeep fever.” I began daydreaming about owning a Jeep, driving around with the top down, and going on trips into the mountains. That’s when it happened. Everywhere I went, I saw Jeeps. I passed countless Jeeps on the road. There were Jeeps in every parking lot. Practically everyone had a Jeep but me. Where did all these Jeeps come from?! Logically, I had to assume there was relatively the...
Build Your First Azure Function in Visual Studio Code
Inevitably it happens. You go to one of those bars that has three trillion beers on tap, and you stare hopelessly at the wall of taps trying to decide what to order. Panic no more! Hop Roulette is here to save you from embarrassment when the bartender asks, “What’ll it be?” Hop Roulette is a simple Azure Function that returns a random beer from an API. What use is this? It gives me a fun...
Create Login and Registration in Your ASP.NET Core MVC App
User authentication and authorization are common features in web applications, but building these mechanics has the potential to take a lot of time. Doing so requires setting up persistent storage for user information (in some type of database) and paying keen attention to potential security issues around sensitive operations like hashing passwords, password reset workflows, etc. - weeks of development time begin to add up before we ever get to the functionality that delivers value...
Go for liftoff at Okta!
T-minus 3… 2… 1… I’m blasting my way into the Developer Relations world like Alice discovering Wonderland and it’s fantastic cast of characters. I am so curious, and excited, and all of the feels that come with coming to Okta! Officially stepping into the Developer Avocado (er… pardon me, Advocate) role and bringing the love of .NET, voice and IOT to the party. Who is this Lady Nerd? Well, for starters I am obsessed with...
Create and Verify JWTs in PHP with OAuth 2.0
JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) allow you to implement stateless authentication (without the use of server-side sessions). JWTs are digitally signed with a secret key and can contain various information about the user: identity, role, permissions, etc in JSON format. This information is simply encoded and not encrypted. However, because of the digital signature, the payload cannot be modified without access to the secret key. JWTs are a relatively hot topic as they are widely used...