Builtin token generator in Node

For those who are already familiar with the concept, you can skip the explanation and directly access the code snippet: Go to Code. For those who are interested in learning about it, I encourage you to continue reading below.

Introduction

In modern web applications, JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication is a widely adopted method to secure APIs and authenticate users. The tokens are generated using cryptographic algorithms, such as HMAC or RSA, among others, to ensure both their uniqueness and security. These algorithms play a crucial role in generating secure tokens that can be trusted for authentication and data integrity.
For the generation of these tokens, it requires a secret. secret is a key that is used sign and verify the integrity of the token.

Choosing a strong secret key is crucial for secure token verification. Using simple and easily guessable secrets like "secret123" or "catdog123" can make the token verification process vulnerable to unauthorized intruders. In the early stages of my Node.js journey, I had used such secrets. It is important to select a unique and complex secret key to enhance the security of the tokens and in this blog post, we will explore how to generate secure random token easily in the console using NodeJs and it's builtin crypto module.

Prerequisites:
Before proceeding, make sure you have Node.js installed on your machine. You can download the latest version from the official Node.js website (https://nodejs.org).

Code

To generate a secure secret key, you can follow these steps:

require('crypto').randomBytes(64).toString('hex')

1. Copy the above line of code:
2. Open terminal or console.
3. Run node on the terminal or console.
4. Paste the code.
5. Press enter to run the code.

Remember to save and bookmark this blog post so that you can easily refer back to it whenever you need to generate a secret key for your future projects.