Password Hashing using bcrypt

Authentication is a very important aspect of web development, and as beginners, it can seem like a daunting task. In this brief tutorial, we would learn how to hash passwords during user signup/registration.

Pre-requisites

1. Basic knowledge of JavaScript.
2. expressJS
3. bcrypt package

Create a folder on your local machine, and create a file app.js. we would put every code in this single file.

const express = require("express");
const bcrypt = require("bcrypt")

const app = express(); // init express app

app.listen(5000, () => {
   console.log('Server listening on port 5000...')
})

We wouldn't be using a database in this tutorial but a array to pass the lesson across. We would create an async-await function for the password hash.

const express = require("express");
const bcrypt = require("bcrypt")

const app = express(); // init express app

app.use(express.json()) // accepting json body-parsers

const users = [] // we would be using as local storage

// creating a function for the password hash
const hashPassword = async (password) => {
  try {
    const salt = await bcrypt.genSalt();
    const hashedPassword = await bcrypt.hash(password, salt);
    return hashedPassword;
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
  }
};

// Server up and running
app.listen(5000, () => {
   console.log('Server listening on port 5000...')
})

Now, it is time to use the password hash function we created above to hash passwords. And the empty users array as our local storage.

const express = require("express");
const bcrypt = require("bcrypt")

const app = express(); // init express app

app.use(express.json()) // accepting json body-parsers

const users = [] // we would be using as local storage

// creating a function for the password hash
const hashPassword = async (password) => {
  try {
    const salt = await bcrypt.genSalt();
    const hashedPassword = await bcrypt.hash(password, salt);
    return hashedPassword;
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
  }
};

// sending a post request to create a user
app.post(async (req, res) => {
    const passwordHash = await hashPassword(req.body.password)
    try {
    const user = {username: req.body.username, password: 
               passwordHash}
    users.push(user);
    res.status(201).json(user); 
/*
would return the user if you are using postman, 
you can as well console.log(user) to see the result in the terminal
*/
    } catch (error){
      console.error(error)
    }
})

// Server up and running
app.listen(5000, () => {
   console.log('Server listening on port 5000...')
})

I believe things worked out on your own end, while following this tutorial..

Thanks for reading..