javascript - Why is PassportJS in Node not removing session on logout

Question

I am having trouble getting my system to log out with PassportJS. It seems the logout route is being called, but its not removing the session. I want it to return 401, if the user is not logged in in specific route. I call authenticateUser to check if user is logged in.

Thanks a lot!

/******* This in index.js *********/
// setup passport for username & passport authentication
adminToolsSetup.setup(passport);

// admin tool login/logout logic
app.post("/adminTool/login",
    passport.authenticate('local', {
        successRedirect: '/adminTool/index.html',
        failureRedirect: '/',
        failureFlash: false })
);
app.get('/adminTool/logout', adminToolsSetup.authenticateUser, function(req, res){
    console.log("logging out");
    console.log(res.user);
    req.logout();
    res.redirect('/');
});


// ******* This is in adminToolSetup ********
// Setting up user authentication to be using user name and passport as authentication method,
// this function will fetch the user information from the user name, and compare the password     for authentication
exports.setup = function(passport) {
    setupLocalStrategy(passport);
    setupSerialization(passport);
}

function setupLocalStrategy(passport) {
    passport.use(new LocalStrategy(
        function(username, password, done) {
            console.log('validating user login');
            dao.retrieveAdminbyName(username, function(err, user) {
                if (err) { return done(err); }
                if (!user) {
                    return done(null, false, { message: 'Incorrect username.' });
                }
                // has password then compare password
                var hashedPassword = crypto.createHash('md5').update(password).digest("hex");
                if (user.adminPassword != hashedPassword) {
                    console.log('incorrect password');
                    return done(null, false, { message: 'Incorrect password.' });
                }
                console.log('user validated');
                return done(null, user);
            });
        }
    ));
}

function setupSerialization(passport) {
    // serialization
    passport.serializeUser(function(user, done) {
        console.log("serialize user");
        done(null, user.adminId);
    });

    // de-serialization
    passport.deserializeUser(function(id, done) {
        dao.retrieveUserById(id, function(err, user) {
            console.log("de-serialize user");
            done(err, user);
        });
    });
}

// authenticating the user as needed
exports.authenticateUser = function(req, res, next) {
    console.log(req.user);
    if (!req.user) {
        return res.send("401 unauthorized", 401);
    }
    next();
}

Answer 1

Brice’s answer is great, but I still noticed an important distinction to make; the Passport guide suggests using .logout() (also aliased as .logOut()) as such:

app.get('/logout', function(req, res){
  req.logout();
  res.redirect('/'); //Can fire before session is destroyed?
});

But as mentioned above, this is unreliable. I found it behaved as expected when implementing Brice’s suggestion like this:

app.get('/logout', function (req, res){
  req.session.destroy(function (err) {
    res.redirect('/'); //Inside a callback… bulletproof!
  });
});

Hope this helps!