Using nginx and express-session

When pushing Socii1 to production, I ran into a couple of problems and I'm sharing them on my blog for you (learn from my mistakes!) and me (external memory source). This post will go over how I dealt with secure sessions not working out of the box with HTTPS.

Let's start with some code. I'm using Feathers with Express but this code will still work sans Feathers:

const app = express(feathers())
// above removed for brevity

// Initialize session and restore auth state
.use(session({
store: store, // your session store of choice
secret: secret, // this should be an environment variable
proxy: process.env.NODE_ENV !== "development",
resave: false,
rolling: true,
saveUninitialized: true,
cookie: {
httpOnly: process.env.NODE_ENV !== "development",
path: "/",
maxAge: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7, // 1 week
secure: process.env.NODE_ENV !== "development"
}
}))
;

The process.env.NODE_ENV !== "development" is a clever shortcut I found while troubleshooting this issue. If process.env.NODE_ENV does not equal development, the result will be true in a production environment. In a development environment, the result would be false. This is assuming of course, that your development script sets the environment. Something like this in your package.json:

{
…above removed for brevity

"scripts": {
"build": "npm run clean && npm install && npm run build-server",
"build-server": "babel -d build server",
"clean": "rm -rf build package-lock.json && mkdir build",
"deploy": "vagrant push",
"dev": "NODE_ENV=development nodemon server/index.js --ignore 'public/' --exec babel-node --presets env,stage-2",
"sass": "sass --watch sass:public/css --style compressed",
"start": "npm run build && NODE_ENV=production node build/index.js",
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
}
}

The scripts to pay attention are dev and start. You can see that I set the node environment before running my app. And there you have it, I hope you've found this post helpful!

Going back to the express-session code above, I list what most of the parameters mean:

proxy

Trust the reverse proxy when setting secure cookies (via the "X-Forwarded-Proto" header). The default value is undefined.

true The "X-Forwarded-Proto" header will be used.

false All headers are ignored and the connection is considered secure only if there is a direct TLS/SSL connection.

undefined Uses the "trust proxy" setting from express

resave

Forces the session to be saved back to the session store, even if the session was never modified during the request.

rolling

Force a session identifier cookie to be set on every response. The expiration is reset to the original maxAge, resetting the expiration countdown.

The default value is false.

Note When this option is set to true but the saveUninitialized option is set to false, the cookie will not be set on a response with an uninitialized session.

saveUninitialized

Forces a session that is "uninitialized" to be saved to the store. A session is uninitialized when it is new but not modified.

httpOnly

Ensures the cookie is sent only over HTTP(S), not client JavaScript, helping to protect against cross-site scripting attacks.

secure

Ensures the browser only sends the cookie over HTTPS.

Hope this helps! 🕸