Understanding Authentication and Authorization

Authentication

• Authentication is verifying who a user or client is.
• It ensures that the user is who they claim to be by validating credentials such as username and password.
• Authentication protocols like OAuth and OpenID Connect are commonly used to authenticate users in web applications.
• Best practices for authentication include using strong, unique passwords, implementing MFA, and regularly updating authentication methods.

Authorization

• Authorization controls what actions users can do in the app.
• It involves checking permissions and enforcing access control rules based on the user’s identity and role.
• Authorization mechanisms include role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC).
• RBAC assigns permissions based on user roles, while ABAC evaluates attributes such as user attributes, resource attributes, and environmental attributes.

Authentication and authorization are important aspects of building secure web applications by including those powered by GraphQL. JSON Web Tokens (JWT) provide a popular mechanism for implementing authentication and authorization in GraphQL applications.

In this article, we’ll explore the concepts of authentication and authorization with JWT in a GraphQL application by covering their implementation, and benefits.