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lots of talk about auth being easy to roll yourself
i’ve tried to use every managed auth provider i could find and i always ended up doing my own thing
and it has nothing to do with it being easier or even cost
there’s an entirely different problem
thread boi time
i’ve tried to use every managed auth provider i could find and i always ended up doing my own thing
and it has nothing to do with it being easier or even cost
there’s an entirely different problem
thread boi time
when you look at these auth solutions they typically will handle three things
1. handshakes with third party IDPs (login with google, etc)
2. session management
3. user storage
1+2 are boring and i’m 100% down to offload it to someone else
the problem is #3
1. handshakes with third party IDPs (login with google, etc)
2. session management
3. user storage
1+2 are boring and i’m 100% down to offload it to someone else
the problem is #3
every managed auth provider eventually wants to store your users for you
reason being solving 1+2 isn’t a sticky pitch and can be done by an open source library
but if you’re doing user storage you can start to offer all kinds of attractive features
but there’s a trade off
reason being solving 1+2 isn’t a sticky pitch and can be done by an open source library
but if you’re doing user storage you can start to offer all kinds of attractive features
but there’s a trade off
imagine you’re building reddit where people can comment on links
to render a page of comments you need the comments themselves and information about the author like name, picture, etc
if all that is in a single database you can use joins to efficiently get this info
to render a page of comments you need the comments themselves and information about the author like name, picture, etc
if all that is in a single database you can use joins to efficiently get this info
but when user storage is stored elsewhere you need to do that join in the application by first fetching comments from your db then filling the author info from third party
this is a lot slower - you probably can’t even guarantee these users are stored in the same data center
this is a lot slower - you probably can’t even guarantee these users are stored in the same data center
it’s also more annoying and likely impacts a lot of your features
you lose any ability to do transactional updates between user data and app specific data
i use @replicache which has strict transactional requirements and it’s literally impossible to use third party user storage
you lose any ability to do transactional updates between user data and app specific data
i use @replicache which has strict transactional requirements and it’s literally impossible to use third party user storage
what you’re effectively doing is deciding to use a secondary database for some data you probably need to access often
and that effectively introduces a bunch of distributed systems problems you don’t want to deal with - basically all the reasons people tell you not to use NoSQL
and that effectively introduces a bunch of distributed systems problems you don’t want to deal with - basically all the reasons people tell you not to use NoSQL
so that’s why i end up doing my own auth
plenty of tools to make 1+2 painless and no one can actually solve 3 for me for anything even moderately complex
plenty of tools to make 1+2 painless and no one can actually solve 3 for me for anything even moderately complex
as usual a bunch of you are missing the point in your eagerness to have a smart reply
to clarify the main point here is auth as a service businesses want to do 3 for you and you should think twice
as i said in the thread offloading 1+2 (many flavors of this) is totally fine
to clarify the main point here is auth as a service businesses want to do 3 for you and you should think twice
as i said in the thread offloading 1+2 (many flavors of this) is totally fine
https://twitter.com/thdxr/status/1646856253522550784
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