JSON Web Token (JWT) is a way to generate auth tokens. It’s is an open standard (RFC 7519) that defines a simple way for securely transmitting information between client and server as a JSON object.
JWT Tokens V/S Cookies
Since HTTP is a stateless protocol, after you login (via username/password, OAuth 2 etc), for every future request to the server, you need to keep telling the server that you have already logged in so it can allow you to perform authenticated/authorized actions. One way to do this is via “session” cookies and other way is to use “auth” tokens.
JWT offers many benefits over using session cookies but the 2 major ones are:
- Server doesn’t need to ask DB to know who the user is because the user info is embedded inside the token itself! #performance!
- It works the same for both native mobile apps and browser clients. i.e. servers don’t need to implement two different mechanisms (browser v/s native).
Learn more: 10 things you should know about tokens and cookies
Note: You can click on the picture to zoom and read
Note: I’ll be using the same blog-post Redux app in here as well.
