Creating the User

We'll need to...

1. Install an additional dependency: bcrypt
2. Create the user model
3. Validate the user's name, email, and password
4. Hash the user's password before saving it to the database
5. Create methods to validate passwords and protect the password data

Installing bcrypt

In order to hash passwords, we'll need to install bcrypt.

npm install --save bcrypt

Creating the user model

We can create a user model using the Sequelize CLI. Let's create a user with a name, email, and password. You can add more attributes later if you'd like.

sequelize model:create --name user --attributes email:string,name:string,password:string

sequelize db:migrate

This should pass the following test

Creating a User - should create successfully

Validate the user's name, email, and password

Now that we have a user, we want to limit the values we can assign to a user's name, email, and password. Here are some examples.

• User's email should be a valid address
• User's name should be between 1-99 characters
• User's password should be between 8-99 characters

In order to do this, we can use Sequelize validations. Note that by adding a msg within each validation, we'll be able to give a user-friendly message if a validation fails. This will be handled in our routes later.

Sequelize Validation Documentation

models/user.js

{
  email: {
    type: DataTypes.STRING,
    validate: {
      isEmail: {
        msg: 'Invalid email address'
      }
    }
  },
  name: {
    type: DataTypes.STRING,
    validate: {
      len: {
        args: [1, 99],
        msg: 'Name must be between 1 and 99 characters'
      }
    }
  },
  password: {
    type: DataTypes.STRING,
    validate: {
      len: {
        args: [8, 99],
        msg: 'Password must be between 8 and 99 characters'
      }
    }
  }
}

This should pass the following tests

Creating a User - should throw an error on invalid email addresses

Creating a User - should throw an error on invalid name

Creating a User - should throw an error on invalid password

Hash the user's password before saving

Currently, we're saving user passwords as plain text. This is bad! Very bad!

• If someone gained access to our database, they would have a collection of emails and passwords. Since most people use the same password across different accounts, this can have drastic identity and legal consequences.
• We the developers shouldn't be able to see our users' passwords, for the same reasons above.

Therefore, we need to hash the password before it ever reaches the database. We can use a beforeCreate hook to do this automatically on every model's creation.

models/user.js

// at the very top, require bcrypt
var bcrypt = require('bcrypt');

// ...
{
  // ...
  hooks: {
    beforeCreate: function(createdUser, options, cb) {
      // hash the password
      var hash = bcrypt.hashSync(createdUser.password, 10);
      // store the hash as the user's password
      createdUser.password = hash;
      // continue to save the user, with no errors
      cb(null, createdUser);
    }
  },
  classMethods: {},
  // ...
}

This should pass the following test

Creating a User - should hash the password before save

Validating and Protecting the Password

Now that user passwords are hashed, we need to solve the last two problems with the user model.

• Comparing a password a user inputs to the user's hash in the database.
• Keeping the hash hidden

In order to perform these actions, we'll create two methods that can be called on user objects.

• To validate the password, we'll create an instance method called validPassword to accept a password as a parameter, then compare the password to the hash.
  • Example

    user.validPassword('password'); // return true or false
    

• To hide the hash from the user object, we'll override an instance method called toJSON, which will leave the hash out of the user's JSON object.
  • Example

    user.toJSON(); // returns { name: 'Brian', email: '[email protected]' }
    

models/user.js

{
  classMethods: {},
  instanceMethods: {
    validPassword: function(password) {
      // return if the password matches the hash
      return bcrypt.compareSync(password, this.password);
    },
    toJSON: function() {
      // get the user's JSON data
      var jsonUser = this.get();
      // delete the password from the JSON data, and return
      delete jsonUser.password;
      return jsonUser;
    }
  }
}

This should pass the following tests

User instance methods - validPassword - should validate a correct password

User instance methods - validPassword - should invalidate an invalid password

User instance methods - toJSON - should return a user without a password field

User Finished

Congrats, your user should be finished! Verify by running the user tests only. All tests should pass.

NODE_ENV=test node_modules/mocha/bin/mocha test/user.test.js