How can I securely handle authentication in a React single-page application?

Starting from scratch can be daunting! If you're building your own authentication, remember to take it step-by-step. Begin with a basic user login where you validate the username and password on the backend. Once that's in place, you can look into more advanced topics like session management and hashed passwords. You'll want to keep things simple until your app requires additional features like OAuth or persistent sessions.

You really need a backend system to handle authentication if you're using React. Generally, it's a good idea to implement something like Node.js for backend support. React, by itself, won’t manage authentication effectively; you’ll need a server-side solution.

Just to clarify, you're using React for the front end, but make sure you understand that the backend needs to handle the authentication process. So, what backend are you planning to use? You can’t rely solely on React for auth; a backend service will manage it.

Setting up authentication can indeed be tricky! If you’re considering server-side rendering (SSR) for your app, you might find packages like betterAuth helpful. Also, if you’re working with an existing backend, using JWT (JSON Web Tokens) can work well. You could implement an access token that expires quickly, say after 15 minutes, and a longer-lived refresh token stored in a secure cookie. Just make sure to also manage your token refreshes to maintain user sessions smoothly. I also suggest using something like Axios for making request interceptors.