Using React Context Provider as an Authentication Layer in ReactJS

Authentication is an important part of building modern applications. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at using React Context Provider as an authentication layer in ReactJS. We’ll look at what React Context is, how it can be used to handle authentication, and how to create a simple authentication system using React Context.

What is React Context?

React Context is a way of storing and sharing state across components in a React app. It provides a way for components to access data from a single source of truth, without needing to pass props down manually from component to component.

React Context can be used to handle authentication in your app. It allows you to store the user’s authentication state in a central location, and provides a way for different components in your app to access this state without having to pass props manually.

To use React Context , we first need to create one. This can be done like so:

const authContext = React.createContext();

Next, we need to create a provider. This provider will wrap our application and act as the source of truth for the authentication state. It should look something like this:

const AuthProvider = ({ children }) => {
    const [isLoggedIn, setIsLoggedIn] = useState(false);

    // For this example we'll update the state to login or logout a user, 
    // but you may want to implement an API for this in your application.
    const login = () => setIsLoggedIn(true); 
    const logout = () => setIsLoggedIn(false);
    const authValue = {
        isLoggedIn,
        login,
        logout,
    };

    return (
        <authContext.Provider value={authValue}>{children}</authContext.Provider>
    );
};

In a real-world application you may need to use this in your base component, for example App or Dashboard component.

Finally, we need to create a hook for accessing the authentication state. This hook will returna boolean indicating if the user is logged in, and functions for logging in and out. It should look something like this:

const useAuth = () => {
    const auth = React.useContext(authContext);
    return  { isLoggedIn, login, logout } = auth;
};

Now we can use above hook anywhere in your application to,

• Check authentication status
• Login a user
• Logout a user