Auth Cookie (Strapi v5)

Plugin that mirrors the JWT issued by Users & Permissions into cookies and reuses it in subsequent requests. Includes settings in the Strapi dashboard and signature verification to detect tampered tokens.

What it does

• Sends the JWT in the access_token cookie upon login, registration, reset, or OAuth.
• Generates the signed access_token.sig cookie via HMAC using Strapi's secret.
• Injects Authorization: Bearer <token> into every incoming request if the signature is valid.
• Clears both cookies when the plugin is disabled or an invalid signature is detected.

Installation

npm install @growy/strapi-plugin-auth-cookie
# either
yarn add @growy/strapi-plugin-auth-cookie

Basic configuration

config/plugins.js file:

module.exports = () => ({
  'auth-cookie': {
    enabled: true,
    config: {
      enabled: true,
      cookieName: 'access_token',
      signatureCookieName: 'access_token.sig',
      signatureEnabled: true,
      signatureHttpOnly: true,
      path: '/',
      domain: null,
      secure: false,
      httpOnly: true,
      sameSite: 'lax',
      maxAge: null,
    },
  },
});

After modifying the configuration, run npm run build and restart Strapi. Settings can also be managed from Admin → Settings → Auth Cookie.

Available Options

• enabled: Enables cookie mirroring.
• cookieName: Name of the JWT in the cookie.
• signatureEnabled: Enables the signature cookie; disable it only if you cannot access the JWT secret.
• signatureCookieName: Name of the signature cookie.
• signatureHttpOnly: Controls whether the signature is accessible from JavaScript (it is recommended to leave it set to true).
• path, domain: Cookie scope.
• secure, httpOnly, sameSite: Security attributes.
• maxAge: Duration in milliseconds (null = session cookie).

Production Checklist

1. Configure CORS in config/middlewares.js to allow your frontend and enable credentials: true:

module.exports = [
  {
    name: 'strapi::cors',
    config: {
      origin: ['https://app.example.com'],
      credentials: true,
    },
  },
];

2. Set url and proxy: true in config/server.js if you're using a CDN or a proxy (Nginx, Cloudflare).
3. Use SameSite: 'none' and secure: true when the frontend and API are on different domains.
4. Set the domain to .your-domain.com if you're sharing cookies across subdomains.

Frontend Example

await fetch(`${import.meta.env.VITE_STRAPI_URL}/api/auth/local`, {
  method: "POST",
  credentials: "include",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({ identifier, password }),
});

The plugin will add the Authorization header to subsequent requests as long as access_token and access_token.sig are still valid.

License

MIT