How Sessions, Tokens and Authentication Work After You Log In
HTTP is stateless by design, meaning servers have no inherent memory of previous requests, which creates a challenge for maintaining authenticated user sessions. To solve this, session management uses a combination of short-lived access tokens (JWTs) and long-lived refresh tokens issued upon successful login. A session lifecycle involves three core operations: authentication to establish the session, token rotation to keep long-lived sessions secure, and revocation to invalidate sessions before they naturally expire. The project referenced demonstrates these concepts using a Node.js and Express backend built with TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and Prisma ORM. Token rotation replaces the refresh token after each use, reducing the risk of token theft in persistent sessions.
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