Sveltekit Password

How to protect a SvelteKit page with a password

SvelteKit-Password

https://sveltekit-password.netlify.app/

This repository demonstrates how to implement a password-protected page inside of a SvelteKit application. Below you also find a step-by-step tutorial. We will also see how to protect multiple pages.

The password is: sveltekit2023

How it's done

Setup

First of all, we start with three simple pages: /, /blog and /personal.

/routes

  +page.svelte

  /blog
    +page.svelte

  /personal
    +page.svelte

We would like to protect /personal with a password.

Let's first create a password and save it in our .env file:

SECRET_PASSWORD = sveltekit123

Now let's create a login page /login/+page.svelte with a login form:

<h1>Login</h1>

<form method="POST">
    <label>Password<input name="password" type="password" /></label>
    <button>Login</button>
</form>

To handle the POST request, we create /login/+page.server.ts and add an Action handler which validates the password:

import type { Actions } from "./$types";
import { SECRET_PASSWORD } from "$env/static/private";
import { fail, redirect } from "@sveltejs/kit";
import { save_session } from "../../db/session";

export const actions: Actions = {
  default: async ({ request, cookies }) => {
    const data = await request.formData();
    const password = data.get("password");
    const password_correct = password === SECRET_PASSWORD;

    if (password_correct) {
      ...
    }

    return fail(401, { password_correct });
  },
};

If the password is not correct, we send the info back to the login page. This info is contained in the form object:

<script lang="ts">
  import type { ActionData } from "./$types";
  export let form: ActionData;
</script>

// ... login form ...

{#if form && !form.password_correct}
  <p>The password is not correct.</p>
{/if}

Cookies

However, if the password is correct, our action handler sets a cookie and then redirects to the personal page:

if (password_correct) {
    const session_id = save_session();
    const one_week = 60 * 60 * 24 * 7;
    cookies.set("session_id", session_id, {
        path: "/",
        maxAge: one_week,
    });

    throw redirect(303, "/personal");
}

The cookie lasts for one week and is httpOnly by default. To generate it, we have used a utility function save_session from session.ts which basically implements a database in memory with the stored sessions.

const sessions = new Set(); // should be in a database

export function save_session(): string {
    const session_id = crypto.randomUUID();
    sessions.add(session_id);
    return session_id;
}

The utility has_session simply checks if the session is in the database.

export function has_session(session_id: string): boolean {
    return sessions.has(session_id);
}

Password protection

Now we need to add a load function to the personal page to check if the user has already logged in - using the cookie. If not, we redirect to the login page.

import type { PageServerLoad } from "./$types";
import { redirect } from "@sveltejs/kit";
import { has_session } from "../../db/session";

export const load: PageServerLoad = async ({ cookies }) => {
    const session_id = cookies.get("session_id");
    if (!session_id) throw redirect(307, "/login");
    const logged_in = has_session(session_id);
    if (!logged_in) throw redirect(307, "/login");
};

And that's it!

Progressive Enhancement

We can improve the UX of the login process by replacing the server-side navigation with a client-side navigation. This can be done simply by adding the action directive use:enhance to our login form:

<script lang="ts">
  import { enhance } from "$app/forms";
  // ...
</script>

<h1>Login</h1>

<form method="POST" use:enhance>
  // ..
</form>

Now, when JS is enabled, the redirection will look much smoother.

Protect more pages

So far, we have only protected one single page inside our application. If you want to protect multiple pages, you can either use hooks (see the documentation or the video Protect SvelteKit Routes with Hooks by Huntabyte) or use the following method:

Let's create a nested page inside of our personal page: /personal/notes/+page.svelte. Its content is not relevant for now, but you might want to add a heading to identify it. With our current solution, you can access it even when you are not logged in. Of course we could just copy-paste our code from +page.server.ts, but this is not a good way. Instead, we move the login logic to a layout load function as follows.

Create an empty layout at /personal/+layout.svelte.

<slot />

This is a nested layout which is added to our root layout. It does not replace it.

Create its corresponding server file personal/+layout.server.ts and move the login logic there, thereby also replacing the type PageServerLoad by LayoutServerLoad.

import type { LayoutServerLoad } from "./$types";
import { redirect } from "@sveltejs/kit";
import { has_session } from "../../db/session";

export const load: LayoutServerLoad = async ({ cookies }) => {
    const session_id = cookies.get("session_id");
    if (!session_id) throw redirect(307, "/login");
    const logged_in = has_session(session_id);
    if (!logged_in) throw redirect(307, "/login");
};

Thus, our personal/+page.server.ts only keeps the empty action:

import type { Actions } from "./$types";

export const actions: Actions = {
    default: async () => {},
};

What we have done protects all nested pages inside of the /personal folder (since they load the nested layout), and this applies in particular to our /personal/notes page.

There is a security issue, however, as explained by Hunterbyte in the video Are your routes actually protected?. Navigate to /personal, delete the cookie (imagine that the cookie is expired), and try to go to /personal/notes. You have access even though you should not be logged in anymore. In other words, even though our solution protects the pages from users who are not logged in at all, it does not proctect the pages from users who have just been logged out (in the same session).

The reason is that the server load of /personal/notes (which is empty right now, we did not create it) does not load the server load inside of personal/+layout.server.ts. You can check this by console logs. Fortunately, there is a way to solve this: we create /personal/notes/+page.server.ts and add the following:

import type { PageServerLoad } from "./$types";

export const load: PageServerLoad = async ({ parent }) => {
    await parent();
};

We also add this code to /personal/+page.server.ts. The parent function refers to the surrounding layout server load. This way we force it to run again and hence check if the user is still logged in.

As you see this grew a bit out of hand. You might not need to do this when you just want to protect a single page, and maybe you also do not really care about logging out users properly who already have the password. But for bigger endeavors (such as an admin page) it becomes apparent that a layout (or page) server load function is not ideal. Hooks are a better solution. Again, check out the video Protect SvelteKit Routes with Hooks by Huntabyte. Maybe I will create a "follow-up" repository to this one which uses hooks instead.

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