Authentication and authorization are the foundation of modern web security. They prove who a user is and ensure they can only access what they are allowed to.
The traditional session-based authentication stored this login information in servers. While this worked well for simple websites, it became slow and complicated when apps grew to use multiple servers, as sharing that session data across them was difficult.
JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) solve this by being stateless and self-contained. A JWT acts like a digital ID card that carries all the user's information inside it, so servers can instantly verify the user without needing to constantly check a database.
Today, JWTs are the standard way to identify logged-in users, issued by a login server and checked by your APIs or frontend apps.
Authentication and authorization are the foundation of modern web security. They ensure that users are who they claim to be and that they can only access resources they are allowed to.
Traditional session-based authentication stores user information on the server. While this worked well for early monolithic apps, it introduced scaling challenges in distributed systems, where maintaining session state across multiple servers or microservices quickly became complex and inefficient.
JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) solve this by being stateless, self-contained, and easily verifiable. A JWT acts like a digital ID card that carries all the user's information inside it, eliminating the need for frequent database lookups and enabling fast, scalable authentication across APIs, mobile apps, and microservices.
JWTs are most commonly used to identify authenticated users, issued by an authentication server and consumed by your APIs or frontend applications.
A JWT is a standard for authentication and information exchange defined by RFC 7519. It allows for the secure and compact storage of JSON objects. This token is a Base64-encoded string and can be signed using a secret or a public/private key pair.
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