Why JWT Exists - What I Figured Out by Looking at Real Numbers
The article discusses the purpose and advantages of JSON Web Tokens (JWT) in authentication. It contrasts JWT with traditional session-based authentication, highlighting the inefficiencies of database lookups for each request. The author explains how JWT improves performance by allowing servers to verify user identity without constant database access.
- ▪JWT signing takes approximately 5ms, while traditional session authentication requires about 50ms for database lookups.
- ▪Using bcrypt for per-request authentication is inefficient due to its intentional slowness, which can lead to server overload.
- ▪JWT consists of three parts: header, payload, and signature, allowing for quick verification without database access.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3598769) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Vikrant Kumar Posted on Jun 3 Why JWT Exists - What I Figured Out by Looking at Real Numbers #webdev #programming #javascript #productivity When I first learned JWT, I thought it was just "a library to create tokens for authentication." I used it in every project. I knew how to use it. But I never understood why it exists, why it is designed the way it is, and why everyone uses it instead of other approaches.
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