Payload's Authentication is extremely powerful and gives you everything you need when you go to build a new app or site in a secure and responsible manner.
To enable Authentication on a collection, define an auth property and set it to either true or to an object containing the options below.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
useAPIKey | Payload Authentication provides for API keys to be set on each user within an Authentication-enabled Collection. More |
tokenExpiration | How long (in seconds) to keep the user logged in. JWTs and HTTP-only cookies will both expire at the same time. |
maxLoginAttempts | Only allow a user to attempt logging in X amount of times. Automatically locks out a user from authenticating if this limit is passed. Set to 0 to disable. |
lockTime | Set the time (in milliseconds) that a user should be locked out if they fail authentication more times than maxLoginAttempts allows for. |
depth | How many levels deep a user document should be populated when creating the JWT and binding the user to the express req. Defaults to 0 and should only be modified if absolutely necessary, as this will affect performance. |
cookies | Set cookie options, including secure, sameSite, and domain. For advanced users. |
forgotPassword | Customize the way that the forgotPassword operation functions. More |
verify | Set to true or pass an object with verification options to require users to verify by email before they are allowed to log into your app. More |
disableLocalStrategy | Advanced - disable Payload's built-in local auth strategy. Only use this property if you have replaced Payload's auth mechanisms with your own. |
strategies | Advanced - an array of PassportJS authentication strategies to extend this collection's authentication with. More |
To integrate with third-party APIs or services, you might need the ability to generate API keys that can be used to identify as a certain user within Payload.
For example, if you have a third-party service or external app that needs to be able to perform protected actions at its discretion, you have two options:
Technically, both of these options will work for third-party integrations but the second option with API key is simpler, because it reduces the amount of work that your integrations need to do to be authenticated properly.
To enable API keys on a collection, set the useAPIKey auth option to true. From there, a new interface will appear in the Admin panel for each document within the collection that allows you to generate an API key for each user in the Collection.
To authenticate REST or GraphQL API requests using an API key, set the Authorization header. The header is case-sensitive and needs the slug of the auth.useAPIKey enabled collection, then " API-Key ", followed by the apiKey that has been assigned. Payload's built-in middleware will then assign the user document to req.user and handle requests with the proper access control.
For example, using Fetch:
You can customize how the Forgot Password workflow operates with the following options on the auth.forgotPassword property:
generateEmailHTML
Function that accepts one argument, containing { req, token, user }, that allows for overriding the HTML within emails that are sent to users attempting to reset their password. The function should return a string that supports HTML, which can be a full HTML email.
Example:
generateEmailSubject
Similarly to the above generateEmailHTML, you can also customize the subject of the email. The function argument are the same but you can only return a string - not HTML.
Example:
If you'd like to require email verification before a user can successfully log in, you can enable it by passing true or an options object to auth.verify. The following options are available:
generateEmailHTML
Function that accepts one argument, containing { req, token, user }, that allows for overriding the HTML within emails that are sent to users indicating how to validate their account. The function should return a string that supports HTML, which can optionally be a full HTML email.
Example:
generateEmailSubject
Similarly to the above generateEmailHTML, you can also customize the subject of the email. The function argument are the same but you can only return a string - not HTML.
Example:
As of Payload 1.0.0, you can add additional authentication strategies to Payload easily by passing them to your collection's auth.strategies array.
Behind the scenes, Payload uses PassportJS to power its local authentication strategy, so most strategies listed on the PassportJS website will work seamlessly. Combined with adding custom components to the admin panel's Login view, you can create advanced authentication strategies directly within Payload.
The strategies property is an array that takes objects with the following properties:
strategy
This property can accept a Passport strategy directly, or you can pass a function that takes a payload argument, and returns a Passport strategy.
name
If you pass a strategy to the strategy property directly, the name property is optional and allows you to override the strategy's built-in name.
However, if you pass a function to strategy, name is a required property.
In either case, Payload will prefix the strategy name with the collection slug that the strategy is passed to.