A brief introduction to user sessions and authentication
When talking about user authentication, we refer to that process that identifies a specific user, letting them read, write, update, or delete any protected content, depending on their authorization level.
A typical example could be a simple blogging system: we can publish, edit, or even delete content only after authenticating ourselves.
There are many different authentication strategies, but the most common are:
- Credentials-based authentication: This method allows us to log in to a system using personal credentials, commonly, an email address and a password.
- Social login: We can log in to a system using our social accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on).
- Passwordless login: Over recent years, this has become a pretty popular authentication method. Platforms such as Medium and Slack will send you what's called a "magic link" to your email address, letting you enter your account without...
