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Production
Putting It All Together
You've built every piece:
| Piece | What it bought you |
|---|---|
| Roles | Who owns the data, who wants it, who issues tokens |
| Grant types | Picking a flow from the client's shape |
| Auth code flow | The redirect, the code, the server-side exchange |
| PKCE | A per-flow proof that replaces the client_secret |
| Tokens | Short-lived access, long-lived refresh, rotation |
| Scopes | Least privilege, and what the user actually approved |
| redirect_uri | Exact-match registration, so codes land with you |
| state | Binding the callback to the session that started it |
| Introspection | Asking the auth server whether a token is still live |
What we didn't build: OpenID Connect (OIDC) — adds an id_token (JWT proving identity), userinfo endpoint, and standardized claims. Layer on top of OAuth.
Best-in-class libraries:
- Auth0, Okta, Cognito — managed identity providers (don't build this from scratch in production)
- Keycloak — open-source identity server
- Hydra, Authelia — lightweight self-hosted
Library guidance:
- Server: use a battle-tested library (Keycloak, Hydra, ory)
- Client: use the SDK (Auth0, NextAuth, oauth4webapi)
- Don't roll your own unless you absolutely must
Key security checks every OAuth implementation needs:
- HTTPS everywhere (no mixed content)
- Strict redirect_uri matching
- Proper state validation
- PKCE for public clients
- Constant-time secret comparison
- Refresh token rotation
- Rate limit auth endpoints
- Audit log all token operations
Discussion
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