Authify 🔐✨

Login Screen	Email Verification

A modern full-stack authentication and user management platform with secure login, email verification, password reset via OTP, and JWT-based session handling.

Built with Spring Boot, Spring Security, JWT, MySQL, and React (Vite), following clean architecture and real-world authentication best practices.

This project was designed for learning, production-like implementation, and as a reusable authentication foundation for scalable web applications.

📌 Table of Contents

• Authify 🔐✨
  • 📌 Table of Contents
  • 🌐 Overview
  • ⚙️ Features
  • 🔐 Authentication & Security
    • JWT Authentication
    • Email Verification
    • Password Reset (OTP)
  • 💻 Technologies Used
    • Backend
    • Frontend
  • 🗝️ Key Takeaways
  • 🚀 How to Run the Project
    • Backend (Spring Boot)
      • 1️⃣ Configure environment variables
      • 2️⃣ Run the backend
    • Frontend (React + Vite)
      • 1️⃣ Install dependencies
      • 2️⃣ Run development server
  • 📄 API Endpoints
    • 🔑 Authentication
    • 👤 Profile
  • 🤝 Contributing
  • 💬 Contact

🌐 Overview

Authify is a complete authentication system designed for modern web applications.

It provides:

• Secure login with JWT stored in HTTP-only cookies
• Email verification using OTP
• Password reset via OTP email
• User registration with welcome email
• Stateless authentication with Spring Security
• React frontend with protected routes
• Email templates with Thymeleaf
• Secure CORS configuration

The backend follows stateless security architecture, and the frontend communicates through authenticated API requests.

⚙️ Features

• 🔐 JWT-based authentication
• 🍪 HTTP-only cookie session storage
• 👤 User registration
• 📧 Welcome email on signup
• ✉️ Email verification via OTP
• 🔑 Password reset with OTP
• 🧠 Secure Spring Security configuration
• 🛡️ Custom authentication entry point
• 🌐 CORS configured for frontend integration
• 🧾 Thymeleaf HTML email templates
• ⚡ React frontend with routing
• 🧪 Clean layered backend architecture

🔐 Authentication & Security

Authify uses Spring Security + JWT + HTTP-only cookies.

JWT Authentication

• Users authenticate via /login
• JWT is generated after successful authentication
• Token is stored in:
  • HTTP-only cookie (primary session mechanism)
  • Response body (optional usage)

This prevents JavaScript access and improves security against XSS.

Email Verification

• Authenticated users request a verification OTP
• OTP is sent via email
• User submits OTP to verify account

Verification emails are sent using HTML templates rendered with Thymeleaf.

Password Reset (OTP)

• User requests reset OTP via email
• OTP expires after a limited time
• User submits OTP + new password
• Password is securely updated

💻 Technologies Used

Backend

• Java 21
• Spring Boot 4
• Spring Security
• JWT (jjwt)
• Spring Data JPA / Hibernate
• MySQL
• Spring Mail
• Thymeleaf (email templates)
• Jakarta Validation
• Lombok
• Maven

Frontend

• React 19
• Vite
• React Router
• Axios
• React Toastify
• Bootstrap

🗝️ Key Takeaways

1. Secure authentication with JWT and cookies
2. Stateless backend architecture
3. Email-based verification and password recovery
4. Full-stack integration (Spring Boot + React)
5. Production-style authentication flows
6. Clean security configuration with custom filters

🚀 How to Run the Project

Backend (Spring Boot)

1️⃣ Configure environment variables

Example .env:

# database
DB_URL=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/authify_app
DB_USER=root
DB_PASSWORD=root

# jwt
JWT_SECRET_KEY=your_super_secret_jwt_key_here_change_this

# frontend
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173

# mail (smtp)
MAIL_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
MAIL_PORT=587
MAIL_USER=your_email@gmail.com
MAIL_PASSWORD=your_email_app_password
MAIL_FROM=your_email@gmail.com

2️⃣ Run the backend

mvn spring-boot:run

Backend runs at:

http://localhost:8080

Frontend (React + Vite)

1️⃣ Install dependencies

npm install

2️⃣ Run development server

npm run dev

Frontend runs at:

http://localhost:5173

📄 API Endpoints

🔑 Authentication

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/login	Authenticate and receive JWT cookie
GET	/is-authenticated	Check authentication status
POST	/logout	Clear JWT cookie
POST	/send-reset-otp	Send password reset OTP
POST	/reset-password	Reset password using OTP
POST	/send-verify-otp	Send email verification OTP
POST	/verify-otp	Verify email with OTP

👤 Profile

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/register	Register new user
GET	/profile	Get authenticated user profile

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome!

Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests to improve the project.

💬 Contact

For any inquiries or collaboration opportunities, feel free to reach out via:

(back to top)