This example illustrates how to use Express 4.x and Passport to sign users in with Twitter. Use this example as a starting point for your own web applications.

Quick Start

To get started with this example, clone the repository and install the dependencies.

$ git clone [email protected]:passport/express-4.x-twitter-example.git
$ cd express-4.x-twitter-example
$ npm install

This example requires credentials from Twitter, which can be obtained by creating an app in the developer portal's App page. The callback URL of the app should be set to: http://localhost:3000/oauth/callback/twitter.com

Once credentials have been obtained, create a .env file and add the following environment variables:

TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY={{INSERT_API_KEY_HERE}}
TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET={{INSERT_API_SECRET_KEY_HERE}}

Start the server.

$ npm start

Navigate to http://localhost:3000.

Overview

This example illustrates how to use Passport and the passport-twitter strategy within an Express application to sign users in with Twitter.

The example builds upon the scaffolding created by Express generator, and uses EJS as a view engine and plain CSS for styling. This scaffolding was generated by executing:

$ express --view ejs express-4.x-twitter-example

The example uses SQLite for storing user accounts. SQLite is a lightweight database that works well for development, including this example.

Added to the scaffolding are files which add authentication to the application.

• boot/db.js

  This file initializes the database by creating the tables used to store user accounts and credentials.

• boot/auth.js

  This file initializes Passport. It configures the Twitter strategy and supplies the serialization functions used for session management.

• routes/auth.js

  This file defines the routes used for authentication. In particular, there are three routes used to authenticate with Twitter:

  • GET /login

    This route renders a page that prompts the user to sign in with Twitter.

  • GET /login/federated/twitter.com

    This route begins the authentication sequence by redirecting the user to Twitter.

  • POST /oauth/callback/twitter.com

    This route completes the authentication sequence when Twitter redirects the user back to the application. When a new user signs in, a user account is automatically created and their Twitter account is linked. When an existing user returns, they are signed in to their linked account.

License

The Unlicense