Express

Integrate Nile Auth with express applications

This guide will help you get started with Nile Auth and Express. This guide outlines the steps required to configure and integrate authentication in your application.

If you have not done so yet, be sure you have obtained credentials from the console.

1. Install packages

   npm

     npm install @niledatabase/server @niledatabase/express 
   

2. Configure the extension

   Out of the box, the express extension will add all routes and middleware to your express application to ensure everything works properly.

   app/api/[...nile]/route.ts

   import { express } from 'express'
   import { Nile } from '@niledatabase/server'
   import { express as nileExpress } from '@niledatabase/express'
   
   const app = express();
   
   export const nile = Nile({ 
     extensions: [nileExpress(app)],
     origin: fe_url, // whitelist your FE origin 
   });
   
   

The extension

Under the hood, the express extension does the following:

1. Reconfigures handlers[method] and paths[method] to be compatible with express.
2. Modifies the request handling to match express
3. Uses a combination of AsyncLocalStorage and middleware to ensure each request has the correct context.

Handlers and paths

The express extension registers routes though the specific methods, not as middleware, because nile-auth can span a lot of routes (/api/auth/signin, /api/tenants/:tenantId/users, etc). This allows you to override specific routes, or add new ones since nile only matches specific routes (either the default, or ones that have been configured)

Additionally, since the base @niledatabase/server assumes standard Request and Response objects, this extension turns express objects into those and responds accordingly.

Lastly, because of the express lifecycle, its important to be sure that each requests is executed within a specific context. We automatically add a :tenantId param listener and set the context of the nile instance to that tenantId for convenience. That way, no matter the request or DB query, if you have the tenantId in your param (this also works automatically with the nile.tenantId cookie), there’s no additional work that needs done.