User Class and create-user Script

The User Entity

import { Entity, PrimaryGenerateColumn } from 'typeorm';

@Entity()
export class User {

  @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
  id: number

}

The User entity is the core of the authentication and authorization system. It is a class that represents the user table in the database and each of its instances represents a row in this table.

The class definition is usually located in the file src/app/entities/user.entity.ts. Its attributes represent the columns of the table.

In FoalTS you can customize the User class to suit your needs. The framework makes no assumptions about the attributes required by the user objects. Maybe you'll need a firstName column, maybe not. Maybe the authentication will be processed with an email and a password or maybe you will use an authentication token. The choice is yours!

However, FoalTS provides abstract classes from which you can extend the User entity. Such classes, such as UserWithPermissions, have useful utilities for handling authentication and authorization, so that you do not have to reinvent the wheel.

Creating Users ...

There are several ways to create users.

... Programmatically

import { getManager, getRepository } from 'typeorm';

import { User } from './src/app/entities';

async function main() {
  const user = new User();
  user.foo = 1;
  await getManager().save(user);
  // OR
  await getManager().save(User, {
    foo: 1
  });
  // OR
  await getRepository(User).save({
    foo: 1
  });
}

... with a Shell Script (CLI)

You can use the create-user shell script (located in src/scripts) to create a new user through the command line.

npm run build:scripts
foal run create-user

Example (email and password)

This section describes how to create users with an email and a password.

The User Entity

Go to src/app/entities/user.entity.ts and add two new columns: an email and a password.

import { hashPassword } from '@foal/core';
import { Column, Entity, PrimaryGeneratedColumn, BeforeInsert, BeforeUpdate } from 'typeorm';

@Entity()
export class User {

  @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
  id: number;

  @Column({ unique: true })
  email: string;

  @Column()
  password: string;

  @BeforeInsert()
  @BeforeUpdate()
  async hashPassword() {
    // Hash the password before storing it in the database
    this.password = await hashPassword(this.password);
  }

}

Note: The BeforeInsert and BeforeUpdate are TypeORM decorators for Entity Listeners that run before the entity is saved in the db. In this example they take care of hashing the password. More info about Entity Listeners in the TypeORM docs

The create-user Shell Script

Running the create-user script will result in an error since we do not provide an email and a password as arguments.

Go to src/scripts/create-user.ts and uncomment the lines mentionning the emails and passwords.

To get it work, you will also need to install the password package: npm install --save @foal/password. The isCommon util helps you to detect if a password is too common (ex: 12345) and thus prevents the script from creating a new user with an unsecured password.

You can now create a new user with these commands:

npm run build:scripts
foal run create-user email=mary@foalts.org password=mary_password

Using another ORM/ODM

In this document, we used TypeORM to define the User class and the create-user shell script. However, you can still use another ORM/ODM if you want to.