DEV Community

Aditya Sharma
Aditya Sharma

Posted on

Forget JWTs — Meet SwiftToken: Fast, Secure Tokens in Go

🔐 SwiftToken — Fast, Secure Token Auth for Go

Hey Gophers! 👋

I just released SwiftToken — a blazing-fast 🔥 and secure 🔐 token library for Go, built as an encrypted, lightweight alternative to JWT.

🚀 Why SwiftToken?

JWTs are powerful, but they’re bulky and slow.

SwiftToken is:

  • ⚡ Up to 70x faster than standard JWT
  • 🔒 Encrypted using ChaCha20-Poly1305
  • 📦 Ultra-compact via MessagePack
  • 🔁 Supports sliding tokens with refresh logic
  • 🧪 Fully tested with edge cases
  • 📊 Benchmarked against JWT

📦 Installation 

go get github.com/Aditya251610/swifttoken@v1.0.0
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

⚙️ Setup

Use a 32-byte secret key.

✅ Option 1: via .env 

SWIFTTOKEN_SECRET=12345678901234567890123456789012
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

✅ Option 2: via code 

os.Setenv("SWIFTTOKEN_SECRET", "12345678901234567890123456789012")
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

🔧 Usage

Generate and Verify Token 

package main

import (
  "fmt"
  "os"
  "time"

  "github.com/Aditya251610/swifttoken/token"
  "github.com/Aditya251610/swifttoken/types"
)

func main() {
  os.Setenv("SWIFTTOKEN_SECRET", "12345678901234567890123456789012")

  payload := types.Payload{
    Sub:         "user-123",
    IssuedAt:    time.Now().Unix(),
    ExpiresAt:   time.Now().Add(30 * time.Minute).Unix(),
    SessionID:   "sess-001",
    Permissions: []string{"read", "write"},
    Sliding:     true,
    Nonce:       "random-nonce",
  }

  tokenBytes, err := token.GenerateToken(payload)
  if err != nil {
    panic("Token generation failed: " + err.Error())
  }

  fmt.Println("🔐 Token:", tokenBytes)

  decoded, shouldRefresh, err := token.VerifyToken(tokenBytes)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Println("❌ Invalid token:", err)
    return
  }

  fmt.Printf("✅ Token valid for: %s\n", decoded.Sub)
  if shouldRefresh {
    fmt.Println("♻️ Token should be refreshed")
  }
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

📊 Benchmarks 

go test -bench=. ./benchmarks -benchmem
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
Function SwiftToken JWT (standard)
Generate Token ~669 ns/op ~4331 ns/op
Verify Token ~82 ns/op ~5834 ns/op
Allocations 6 49–70
Payload Size Small (binary) Large (Base64)

🛠️ Roadmap

  • [ ] CLI tool
  • [ ] Token revocation
  • [ ] Introspection endpoint
  • [ ] Plug-in storage backends
  • [ ] SDK for frontend/mobile

🤝 Contributing

  1. ⭐ Star the repo
  2. 🍴 Fork it
  3. git checkout -b feat/my-feature
  4. git commit -m "✨ add feature"
  5. Open a PR ✅

📄 License

MIT — by Aditya Sharma

🔗 GitHub: github.com/Aditya251610/swifttoken

SwiftToken — built for developers who care about performance, security, and simplicity.

Top comments (0)