Question

I am looking for a good way to save an Account to MongoDB using mongoose.

My problem is: The password is hashed asynchronously. A setter wont work here because it only works synchronous.

I thought about 2 ways:

• Create an instance of the model and save it in the callback of the
  hash function.

• Creating a pre hook on ‘save’

Is there any good solution on this problem?

Answer 1

The mongodb blog has an excellent post detailing how to implement user authentication.

http://blog.mongodb.org/post/32866457221/password-authentication-with-mongoose-part-1

The following is copied directly from the link above:

User Model

var mongoose = require('mongoose'),
    Schema = mongoose.Schema,
    bcrypt = require('bcrypt'),
    SALT_WORK_FACTOR = 10;
     
var UserSchema = new Schema({
    username: { type: String, required: true, index: { unique: true } },
    password: { type: String, required: true }
});
     
UserSchema.pre('save', function(next) {
    var user = this;

    // only hash the password if it has been modified (or is new)
    if (!user.isModified('password')) return next();

    // generate a salt
    bcrypt.genSalt(SALT_WORK_FACTOR, function(err, salt) {
        if (err) return next(err);

        // hash the password using our new salt
        bcrypt.hash(user.password, salt, function(err, hash) {
            if (err) return next(err);
            // override the cleartext password with the hashed one
            user.password = hash;
            next();
        });
    });
});
     
UserSchema.methods.comparePassword = function(candidatePassword, cb) {
    bcrypt.compare(candidatePassword, this.password, function(err, isMatch) {
        if (err) return cb(err);
        cb(null, isMatch);
    });
};
     
module.exports = mongoose.model('User', UserSchema);

Usage

var mongoose = require(mongoose),
    User = require('./user-model');
     
var connStr = 'mongodb://localhost:27017/mongoose-bcrypt-test';
mongoose.connect(connStr, function(err) {
    if (err) throw err;
    console.log('Successfully connected to MongoDB');
});
     
// create a user a new user
var testUser = new User({
    username: 'jmar777',
    password: 'Password123'
});
     
// save the user to database
testUser.save(function(err) {
    if (err) throw err;
});
    
// fetch the user and test password verification
User.findOne({ username: 'jmar777' }, function(err, user) {
    if (err) throw err;
     
    // test a matching password
    user.comparePassword('Password123', function(err, isMatch) {
        if (err) throw err;
        console.log('Password123:', isMatch); // -> Password123: true
    });
     
    // test a failing password
    user.comparePassword('123Password', function(err, isMatch) {
        if (err) throw err;
        console.log('123Password:', isMatch); // -> 123Password: false
    });
});