Signing in showed the "Welcome back!" toast but never left /login. The
session cookie was host-only on the API subdomain, so the Next middleware
guard on the site origin saw no cookie and bounced /dashboard straight
back to /login?redirect=/dashboard.
- Add AUTH_COOKIE_DOMAIN, wiring Better Auth's crossSubDomainCookies so
the cookie also reaches the site origin. Unset in dev, where localhost
is single-host and must stay host-only.
- Navigate after authentication with a full page load, via a shared
authRedirect helper: only a top-level request carries the httpOnly
cookie. Used by the login, register, magic-link and Google flows.
- Show "Redirecting..." on the login and register pages and keep the
submit button disabled until the browser replaces the page, instead of
re-enabling it mid-navigation.
- Guard against a redirect loop with a sessionStorage marker. A React ref
cannot do this: the full page load resets component state. If the
destination bounces back, explain it rather than navigating again.
- Middleware: accept any *.session_token cookie so a cookiePrefix change
cannot lock everyone out, and preserve the destination's query string.
- Trust any loopback port in dev, so reaching the dev server through a
forwarded port does not fail Better Auth's CSRF origin check.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replace the hand-rolled JWT auth with Better Auth 1.6.25 httpOnly cookie
sessions, validated against the database on every request so revocation,
bans and role changes take effect immediately.
Backend:
- betterAuth.ts wires the Drizzle adapter, magic links, Google sign-in and
the admin plugin; auth-schema.ts maps Better Auth's models onto the
existing `users` table so user IDs and their foreign keys survive intact.
- routes/auth.ts is gone; Better Auth serves the standard endpoints and
authExt.ts carries the flows it doesn't cover.
- auth.ts shrinks to session resolution and helpers; sessions/revocation in
dashboard.ts now read and delete `auth_sessions` rows directly.
- Schema adds the Better Auth core + admin columns (email_verified, image,
banned, ban_reason, ban_expires), with migrations and tests.
- rateLimit.ts resolves client IPs spoof-resistantly: proxy headers are only
honoured from loopback/RFC1918 peers plus TRUSTED_PROXIES.
- passwordPolicy.ts centralises password validation.
- Bump drizzle-orm, drizzle-kit and better-sqlite3 to versions compatible
with Better Auth.
Frontend:
- auth-client.ts plus a reworked AuthContext and api/client.ts move to
cookie-based sessions; no more bearer tokens in requests or middleware.
photo-api:
- Validate Better Auth session cookies against the shared auth_sessions
table instead of verifying JWTs; JWT_SECRET is no longer needed for user
auth, and PHOTO_VIEW_SECRET now signs gallery view tokens.
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET and BETTER_AUTH_URL are required in production; the
deprecated JWT_SECRET stays only as the photo-api view-token fallback.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
