Using JWT authentication with Django/DRF and Storing JWTs in HttpOnly Cookies - django

Question

I am trying to build a web app using Django and DRF at the back-end and ReactJs at the front end and I want to keep them separate (i.e. avoid Server Side Rendering).For authentication purposes, I want to employ JWT and I am using djangorestframework-jwt for that. I have read it at several places that it is not secure to store JWTs in the local storage so I am trying to use HttpOnly cookies for that. One can achieve that by configuring the django server to send HttpOnly by overriding the following default settings of the drf-jwt package in the settings.py file of your project JWT_AUTH = { 'JWT_AUTH_COOKIE': '<cookie name>', } which is set to none by default. The server sends the httpOnly cookie as anticipated but there are a few issues I am facing:
1.Same Domain Restraint
I am aware that httpOnly cookies wont be attached to the request headers unless the request is being made to the server which is hosted on the some domain. In my case I am using localhost:8000 for django and localhost:3000 for my react project so the browser doesnt attach the cookie as the request is made to a different port. I tried running both app on port 3000 simultaneously, and the browser did attach the cookie in the header and I did get the a 302 response from the server. However, it opened door to all sorts of problems due domain clash. I reckon I can solve this problem using nginx reverse proxy or something like that but I am not sure about it. Do guide me how can I serve both apps on the same host during the development.
2. Token Refresh Problem
When I refer to the view setup to refresh the token, I run into a bad request error even when the browser does attach the cookie along the request header. This is the server response in the browser
{"token":["This field is required."]}
Thanks if for reading it all the way down here!

Answer 1

In order for things to be secure:
You need CORS (Quickstart: CORS_ALLOWED_HOSTS=["http://localhost:3000"], CORS_ALLOW_CREDENTIALS=True)
The short-lived token (session) cookie (5-15mins), should NOT have HTTP-ONLY setting
The refresh token cookie SHALL have HTTP-ONLY setting
Then your basic flow is:
On login Django creates session token and sends it
Your SPA reads the cookie and adds its value to the authorization header (Authorization: JWT ...token...)
Any request to Django should be made with that Authorization header
The refresh flow is:
Send a request to the refresh token endpoint following the documentation of the library you use
Django then reads the HTTP-ONLY cookie and verifies it
If valid, Django sends a new refresh token as HTTP-ONLY cookie along with a new short-lived token session cookie
Once the refresh token has expired, you log the user out.
An article here goes into detail using GraphQL, but the cookie part and handling of most of the frontend code you should be able to adapt to REST.