Jamstack is a modern web development architecture that has been gaining a lot of traction in recent years. With its focus on delivering fast, scalable, and secure applications, Jamstack is quickly becoming the go-to choice for many developers and organizations. One of the key benefits of Jamstack is its ability to leverage serverless technology to provide a high degree of security and scalability. In this post, we will take a deep dive into serverless authentication in Jamstack applications and explore its benefits and practical implementation.
What is Serverless Authentication?
Serverless authentication refers to the use of serverless technologies, such as AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions, to handle authentication tasks in a Jamstack application. The goal of serverless authentication is to provide a scalable, secure, and low-cost solution for authentication that can be easily integrated into a Jamstack application.
Benefits of Serverless Authentication in Jamstack Applications
Scalability
One of the biggest benefits of serverless authentication is scalability. As your Jamstack application grows, the number of users and authentication requests will also increase. With serverless authentication, the infrastructure required to handle these requests can be scaled automatically, without any manual intervention. This means that you can focus on building your application without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure.
Cost Savings
Serverless authentication can also provide significant cost savings compared to traditional authentication methods. With serverless authentication, you only pay for the compute resources you actually use, and there are no upfront costs or long-term commitments. This makes it an ideal solution for small to medium-sized applications, as well as for large-scale applications that experience spikes in traffic.
Ease of Maintenance
Maintenance is a crucial part of any authentication solution, but it can be particularly challenging with traditional authentication methods. With serverless authentication, the authentication logic is maintained and executed by the cloud provider, freeing up your team to focus on other tasks. This can significantly reduce the amount of time and resources required to maintain your authentication solution, and ensure that your application remains secure and up-to-date.
Implementing Serverless Authentication in Jamstack Applications
Now that we've covered the benefits of serverless authentication in Jamstack applications, let's dive into the practical implementation of this solution. We will be using AWS Lambda to implement serverless authentication in our Jamstack application, but the concepts and techniques covered in this section can be applied to other serverless technologies as well.
1. Creating an AWS Lambda Function for Authentication
To get started, we will create a new AWS Lambda function that will handle our authentication logic. To do this, log in to the AWS Console and navigate to the Lambda service. From there, click the "Create function" button and select "Author from scratch." Enter a name for your function and select "Node.js" as the runtime. Finally, select the "Create function" button to create your function.
2. Writing the Authentication Logic
Next, we will write the authentication logic for our Lambda function. To keep things simple, we will use a simple username and password authentication system. However, you can easily extend this logic to support other authentication methods, such as multi-factor authentication or social login.
Here is the code for our authentication logic:
const bcrypt = require("bcryptjs");exports.handler = async (event) => { const { username, password } = JSON.parse(event.body); // Check if the username and password match the expected values const expectedUsername = "admin"; const expectedHashedPassword = "$2a$10$AHYkCbKr7rz8QSo1D7Kj5.5uVly5Z9X9ixVJkPq3cgV7vwM8OuL5e"; const isValidUsername = username === expectedUsername; const isValidPassword = await bcrypt.compare( password, expectedHashedPassword ); if (!isValidUsername || !isValidPassword) { return { statusCode: 401, body: JSON.stringify({ error: "Unauthorized", }), }; } return { statusCode: 200, body: JSON.stringify({ message: "Welcome, admin!", }), };};In this code, we are using the bcrypt library to compare the submitted password with a hashed version of the expected password. If the username and password match, the function returns a success response. Otherwise, the function returns a 401 Unauthorized error.
3. Integrating the AWS Lambda Function with Your Jamstack Application
Now that our authentication logic is in place, we can integrate it with our Jamstack application. To do this, we will use the fetch API to send a request to our Lambda function whenever a user submits the login form. Here is an example of how this integration might look in your Jamstack application:
const loginForm = document.getElementById("login-form");const usernameInput = document.getElementById("username-input");const passwordInput = document.getElementById("password-input");loginForm.addEventListener("submit", async (event) => { event.preventDefault(); const response = await fetch("https://your-lambda-function-url.com/login", { method: "POST", body: JSON.stringify({ username: usernameInput.value, password: passwordInput.value, }), }); if (response.status === 200) { // Handle success } else if (response.status === 401) { // Handle unauthorized error } else { // Handle other errors }});In this code, we are using the fetch API to send a POST request to our AWS Lambda function whenever the login form is submitted. If the request is successful, we handle the success response. If the request returns a 401 Unauthorized error, we handle that error as well.
4. Handling the Response
Finally, we need to handle the response from our AWS Lambda function. In this example, we are simply displaying a success message if the request is successful, and an error message if the request returns a 401 Unauthorized error. Here is an example of how this might look in your Jamstack application:
const loginForm = document.getElementById("login-form");const usernameInput = document.getElementById("username-input");const passwordInput = document.getElementById("password-input");const successMessage = document.getElementById("success-message");const errorMessage = document.getElementById("error-message");loginForm.addEventListener("submit", async (event) => { event.preventDefault(); const response = await fetch("https://your-lambda-function-url.com/login", { method: "POST", body: JSON.stringify({ username: usernameInput.value, password: passwordInput.value, }), }); if (response.status === 200) { successMessage.style.display = "block"; errorMessage.style.display = "none"; } else if (response.status === 401) { successMessage.style.display = "none"; errorMessage.style.display = "block"; } else { // Handle other errors }});In this code, we are using the display property of the successMessage and errorMessage elements to show or hide the messages, depending on the response from our AWS Lambda function. You can easily extend this code to handle other types of responses as well. For example, you could add a loading state to your login form to indicate that the request is in progress.
5. Bonus: Using Altogic to Implement Serverless Authentication
If you don't want to write your own authentication logic, you can use Altogic to implement serverless authentication in your Jamstack application. Altogic is a serverless cloud platform that provides a set of pre-built authentication flows, database, cronjobs, realtime features, message queues, and security features that you can easily integrate with your Jamstack application.
After creating an account, you can use the Quick Start Guide to implement serverless authentication in your Jamstack application. Here is an example of how this might look:
// Import the Altogic Client Libraryimport { createClient } from "altogic";// Initialize the Altogic Instanceconst altogic = createClient(CLIENT_KEY, ENV_URL);// Create a new userconst user = await altogic.auth.signUpWithEmail( "[email protected]", "password", { firstName: "John", lastName: "Doe" });tip
To get started, simply create an account and follow the instructions we provide in the Quick Start Guide to implement serverless authentication in your Jamstack application.
6. Deploying the Jamstack Application
Now that we have implemented serverless authentication in our Jamstack application, we can deploy it to a static hosting provider. In this example, we will use Netlify to deploy our application. To do this, we will first create a new Netlify site and connect it to our GitHub repository. Then, you can add environment variables to your Netlify site, including the URL of your AWS Lambda function. Finally, you can deploy your application to Netlify and test it out.
note
There are some other available options for deploying your Jamstack application rather than Netlify, such as Vercel, Railway, Heroku, and Render. You can choose the one that suits you best.
Conclusion
In this post, we explored the concept of serverless authentication in Jamstack applications and its many benefits, including scalability, cost savings, and ease of maintenance. We also provided a step-by-step guide for implementing serverless authentication in Jamstack applications, using AWS Lambda as an example. With serverless authentication, you can secure your Jamstack application with confidence, knowing that it will scale easily as your application grows and that it can be maintained with ease.