Node Authentication & Ajax Calls

[Dustin Noe]

Hello!  I am a staff member with an organization that teaches classes on edx.  I work with several other teaching assistants to ensure that learners are receiving responses to their questions in the discussion area.  

I am looking to develop a custom solution for our teaching assistants to better manage discussions.

What I would like to do is Authenticate edx from a Node application so that I can perform discussion analysis and develop a custom interface that better suits our organizational needs.  Basically do all of our CRUD from our own interface. 

How would you guys recommend I handle authentication and data transmission from within my Node application?  I am guessing this is not a new question which is why I am asking.