I have Passport authentication set up on my simple Express app and it works fine, and I have it displaying req.user on my index page like this:

<% if (!isAuthenticated) { %>
    <a id="signIn" href="/login">Sign In</a>
<% } else { %>
    <h3 id="weleMsg"><%=user.id%></h3>
    <h2 id="userBalance"><%=user.balance%></h2>
    <a href="/logout">Log Out</a>
<% } %>

In index.js:

app.get('/', function(req, res){
  res.render('index', {
     isAuthenticated: req.isAuthenticated(),
     user: req.user
});

});

What I want to do is confirm the username of who's signed in, in a client side js file in my public directory. What would be the simplest and most straightforward way to make that variable available in that file?

Thank you

I have Passport authentication set up on my simple Express app and it works fine, and I have it displaying req.user on my index page like this:

<% if (!isAuthenticated) { %>
    <a id="signIn" href="/login">Sign In</a>
<% } else { %>
    <h3 id="weleMsg"><%=user.id%></h3>
    <h2 id="userBalance"><%=user.balance%></h2>
    <a href="/logout">Log Out</a>
<% } %>

In index.js:

app.get('/', function(req, res){
  res.render('index', {
     isAuthenticated: req.isAuthenticated(),
     user: req.user
});

});

What I want to do is confirm the username of who's signed in, in a client side js file in my public directory. What would be the simplest and most straightforward way to make that variable available in that file?

Thank you

• javascript
• node.js
• express
• passport.js

• What's wrong with what you have now? You just need to expose it to your client JS, right? Put it in a name spaced object/module/etc. – Dave Newton Commented Jan 22, 2015 at 19:07
• You're saying I need to store it in an object from my index.js and it'll be available from client side js files? I've tried several different things but it always shows up undefined, and I don't exactly understand why I can print it out with ejs in my html with no problem. – user3473543 Commented Jan 22, 2015 at 19:20
• No, I don't mean that-client and server are different processes. You'd need to render JS that you'd then access from the client side. Personally I'd prefer that over an additional http call to get data you already know. – Dave Newton Commented Jan 22, 2015 at 19:46

1 Answer 1

Since the passport.js mantains a session by using a cookie, you can add a simple route in your application that provides the current logged user data in json format:

app.get('/api/user_data', function(req, res) {

            if (req.user === undefined) {
                // The user is not logged in
                res.json({});
            } else {
                res.json({
                    username: req.user
                });
            }
        });

and access it with your client side javascript using jQuery.getJSON() or any other method that can GET request a json content.

Example with jQuery.getJSON():

$.getJSON("api/user_data", function(data) {
    // Make sure the data contains the username as expected before using it
    if (data.hasOwnProperty('username')) {
        console.log('Usrename: ' + data.username);
    }
});