Anyone use JHipster? What the best and safest way to handle session and authentication management on AngularJS?

[Esau]

Hey everyone,

I am having problems figuring out handling session and authentication with AngularJS with a Java Spring Backend. I can surely get something up and running but I don't want to do something hacky so here I am in need of your assistance.

First of all, I will tell you guys what I am using for my environment and technology stack.

I am using a JHipster generated project ( http://jhipster.github.io/tech_stack.html ). 

JHipster is a YeoMen project generator stack for AngularJS + Java Spring Backend + PostgreSQL, MySql or some other databases. It did not include Oracle SQL. 

The reason I say this did not include Oracle SQL is because I had to configure it myself to include Oracle SQL since that is what I need at my work and JHipster does not include Oracle. I also took out Liquidbase because it seem too much of a hassle to get working.

A JHipster project includes token based authentication and session set up already. My problem is integrating these systems to my own AngularJS project. I am not using their full client, so it is not merely just changing how the generated views look.

Questions:

How do I check if the session is valid and allow a user to continue using contained websites?

For example, say a user logs in at the root page '/'

I want for example the AngularJS app to know that if a user is at '/' and the session is valid (the user is logged in), redirect to '/main' or redirect to a whole new page instead of injecting main into the index.html

Here are some attempts at trying to get the session and seeing if its valid:

I used a cookie which works.. kind of... however cookies just doesn't seem like the right way of doing things.

Everything in the console.log is my attempt at trying to find a value that I can use to see if a user is currently logged in with a valid session.

  $rootScope.$on( "$routeChangeStart", function(event, next, current) {

                      $rootScope.isAuthenticated = AuthenticationSharedService.isAuthenticated;

                        console.log("in account check");

                        console.log( AuthenticationSharedService.isAuthenticated);

                        console.log(Session);

                        console.log(JSON.stringify(Session.login));

                        console.log(!Session.login);

                        console.log(Session.login);

                        console.log( $rootScope.isAuthenticated);

                        //console.log( $cookieStore.get("user"));

                      if ($cookieStore.get("user").login.length > 3) {

                         if ($location.path() === "/") {

                             console.log("Login Detected, go to main");

                            // logged user, redirect to /main

                            $location.path('/main').replace();

                         }

                        }

                    });

Thanks, looking forward to solving this so I can move on to the core of the application