Implementing Secure User Authentication with NestJS and Postgres: A Step-by-Step Guide

Authentication and authorization are crucial mechanisms that provide security to web applications. Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user, while authorization determines what actions a user is allowed to perform. There are several common authentication and authorization schemes that are used in web applications such as Username and Password (we are going to explain it here), JSON Web Tokens (JWTs), Multi-Factor Authentication, OAuth etc.

Implementing authentication via username and password is a common method for securing web applications. However, storing passwords in plain text can be a serious security risk, as they can be easily compromised if an attacker gains access to the database. To prevent this, passwords should always be hashed before they are stored.

Let’s start by creating a new project directory and navigate into it:

mkdir nest-auth
cd nest-auth

Initialize a new NPM project: (you can use yarn, as package manager as well)

npm init -y

Install NEST CLI globally:

npm install -g @nestjs/cli

and then generate a new NestJS application from that point: