Authentication Using Better-Auth (Basics Tutorial)

#betterauth #nextjs #drizzle #fullstack

What’s up, devs! 👋
In this post, I’ll walk you through setting up authentication in a Node.js/Next.js project using Better-Auth — a powerful new authentication library. This is based on the first episode of my YouTube playlist Better-Auth Basics.

Better-Auth makes it really easy to implement secure authentication with features like:

✅ Email + Password authentication
✅ Social sign-ins
✅ Built-in rate limiting
✅ Automatic database management & adapters
✅ Two-factor authentication support
✅ Simple client API for frontend integrations

Sounds exciting? Let’s dive in! 🚀

🛠 Project Setup

For this tutorial, I’m working on my personal project — a ride-sharing app.
We’ll integrate Better-Auth into it step by step.

1. Install Dependencies

We’ll need Better-Auth, Drizzle ORM, and Postgres.

bun add better-auth drizzle-orm postgres

2. Environment Variables

Generate a secret key and add it to your .env file:

BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=your-secret-key
BETTER_AUTH_URL=http://localhost:3000 # Base URL of your app
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/dbname

⚙️ Database Setup with Drizzle

Better-Auth ships with ready-to-use schemas.
We’ll copy those into our project and run migrations.

1. Generate Schema

bunx @better-auth/cli generate # create better-auth schema

2. Run Migrations

bunx drizzle-kit generate # generate migration files
bunx drizzle-kit migrate

Once done, your database will have all the required tables.

🔑 Enable Email/Password Authentication

Inside your Better-Auth server setup, enable email/password auth:

// lib/auth.ts
import { betterAuth } from "better-auth";
import { drizzleAdapter } from "better-auth/adapters/drizzle";
import { db } from "@/db"; // your drizzle instance
import * as schema from "@/db/schema"; // your drizzle schema

export const auth = betterAuth({
  database: drizzleAdapter(db, {
    provider: "pg", // or "mysql", "sqlite"
    schema,
  }),
  emailAndPassword: {
    enabled: true,
  },
});

🖥 Setting Up the Client

Better-Auth provides a client utility to make frontend integration simple.

// lib/auth-client.ts
import { createAuthClient } from "better-auth/react";

export const authClient = createAuthClient({
  /** The base URL of the server (optional if you're using the same domain) */
  baseURL: "http://localhost:3000",
});

📡 Next.js API Routes

Now, let’s connect it with Next.js routes.

// app/api/auth/[...all]/route.ts
import { auth } from "@/lib/auth";
import { toNextJsHandler } from "better-auth/next-js";

export const { GET, POST } = toNextJsHandler(auth.handler);

This route will handle all sign-in, sign-up, and session management APIs.

👤 Implement Sign-Up

On your register page, use the client:

async function handleRegister(e) {
  e.preventDefault();
  try {
    await authClient.signUp.email({
      name: form.name,
      email: form.email,
      password: form.password,
      callbackUrl: "/",
    });
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err);
  }
}

🔐 Implement Sign-In

Similarly, on your login page:

async function handleLogin(e) {
  e.preventDefault();
  try {
    await authClient.signIn.email({
      email: form.email,
      password: form.password,
      callbackUrl: "/",
    });
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err);
  }
}

🎉 Testing It Out

Tried signing up → User was created successfully ✅
Tried logging in → Redirected to homepage with 200 response ✅

That’s it! We now have a working authentication flow with Better-Auth.

📌 What’s Next?

This tutorial only covers the basics:

Setting up Better-Auth
Running database migrations with Drizzle
Implementing Sign-In & Sign-Up

In upcoming posts/videos, I’ll cover:

🔑 Authorization & Role-Based Access
⚡ Rate Limiting
🔒 Two-Factor Authentication
🔗 Social Logins

Stay tuned!

🔗 Connect With Me

🐦 Facebook
💻 GitHub
💼 LinkedIn
📽️ Youtube

👉 If you found this useful, drop a comment and let me know what you’re building with Better-Auth.
And don’t forget to follow me here on DEV.to + subscribe on YouTube for more tutorials.

Happy coding! ✨