FastifySession

Features

Session plugin for fastify that supports both stateless and sateful sessions.

• Requires @fastify/cookie to handle cookies.

• Works with fastify ^4.0.0 starting from >=0.16.0.

• Can leverage crypto addons like @mgcrea/fastify-session-sodium-crypto to perform crypto.

• Can leverage store addons like:

  • @mgcrea/fastify-session-redis-store
  • @mgcrea/fastify-session-prisma-store
  • fastify-session-sqlite-store

• Built with TypeScript for static type checking with exported types along the library.

Install

npm install @mgcrea/fastify-session @fastify/cookie
# or
pnpm add @mgcrea/fastify-session @fastify/cookie

Quickstart

Basic example (signed session with hmac stored in a volatile in-memory store)

Defaults to a volatile in-memory store for sessions (great for tests), with hmac for signature.

import createFastify, { FastifyInstance, FastifyServerOptions } from "fastify";
import fastifyCookie from "@fastify/cookie";
import fastifySession from "@mgcrea/fastify-session";

const SESSION_SECRET = "a secret with minimum length of 32 characters";
const SESSION_TTL = 86400; // 1 day in seconds

export const buildFastify = (options?: FastifyServerOptions): FastifyInstance => {
  const fastify = createFastify(options);

  fastify.register(fastifyCookie);
  fastify.register(fastifySession, {
    secret: SESSION_SECRET,
    cookie: { maxAge: SESSION_TTL },
  });

  return fastify;
};

Production example (signed session with sodium stored in redis)

For better performance/security, you can use the @mgcrea/fastify-session-sodium-crypto addon:

Leveraging an external redis store, the session id (generated with nanoid) is signed using a secret-key with libsodium's crytpo_auth

import createFastify, { FastifyInstance, FastifyServerOptions } from 'fastify';
import fastifyCookie from 'fastify-cookie';
import fastifySession from '@mgcrea/fastify-session';
import { SODIUM_AUTH } from '@mgcrea/fastify-session-sodium-crypto';

const SESSION_KEY = 'Egb/g4RUumlD2YhWYfeDlm5MddajSjGEBhm0OW+yo9s='';
const SESSION_TTL = 86400; // 1 day in seconds
const REDIS_URI = process.env.REDIS_URI || 'redis://localhost:6379/1';

export const buildFastify = (options?: FastifyServerOptions): FastifyInstance => {
  const fastify = createFastify(options);

  fastify.register(fastifyCookie);
  fastify.register(fastifySession, {
    key: Buffer.from(SESSION_KEY, 'base64'),
    crypto: SODIUM_AUTH,
    store: new RedisStore({ client: new Redis(REDIS_URI), ttl: SESSION_TTL }),
    cookie: { maxAge: SESSION_TTL },
  });

  return fastify;
};

Stateless example (encrypted session with sodium not using a store)

No external store required, the entire session data is encrypted using a secret-key with libsodium's crypto_secretbox_easy

Here we used a secret instead of providing a key, key derivation will happen automatically on startup.

import createFastify, { FastifyInstance, FastifyServerOptions } from "fastify";
import fastifyCookie from "fastify-cookie";
import fastifySession from "@mgcrea/fastify-session";
import { SODIUM_SECRETBOX } from "@mgcrea/fastify-session-sodium-crypto";

const SESSION_TTL = 86400; // 1 day in seconds

export const buildFastify = (options?: FastifyServerOptions): FastifyInstance => {
  const fastify = createFastify(options);

  fastify.register(fastifyCookie);
  fastify.register(fastifySession, {
    secret: "a secret with minimum length of 32 characters",
    crypto: SODIUM_SECRETBOX,
    cookie: { maxAge: SESSION_TTL },
  });

  return fastify;
};

Benchmarks

Session crypto sealing

node --experimental-specifier-resolution=node --loader=ts-paths-esm-loader/transpile-only --no-warnings test/benchmark/cryptoSeal.ts

SODIUM_SECRETBOX#sealJson x 333,747 ops/sec ±0.62% (91 runs sampled)
SODIUM_AUTH#sealJson x 376,300 ops/sec ±0.50% (89 runs sampled)
HMAC#sealJson x 264,292 ops/sec ±3.13% (85 runs sampled)
Fastest is SODIUM_AUTH#sealJson

Session crypto unsealing

node --experimental-specifier-resolution=node --loader=ts-paths-esm-loader/transpile-only --no-warnings test/benchmark/cryptoUnseal.ts

SODIUM_SECRETBOX#unsealJson x 424,297 ops/sec ±0.69% (86 runs sampled)
SODIUM_AUTH#unsealJson x 314,736 ops/sec ±0.96% (89 runs sampled)
HMAC#unsealJson x 145,037 ops/sec ±5.67% (78 runs sampled)
Fastest is SODIUM_SECRETBOX#unsealJson

Authors

• Olivier Louvignes <>

Credits

Heavily inspired from

• fastify-secure-session by Matteo Collina
• fastify-session by Denis Fäcke
• express-session by Douglas Wilson
• cookie-signature by TJ Holowaychuk

License

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2020 Olivier Louvignes 

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated
documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the
rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit
persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the
Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR
COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR
OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.