Sessions overview

When handling the token for a new authentication factor (authenticate magic link and authenticate OTP), include a session_duration_minutes field to begin a new session. Sessions can be between 5 minutes and 90 days long (129600 minutes). If you provide this field, the authenticate method’s response field will include values for session, session_token, and session_jwt.

On each request, before doing anything that requires authorization, call authenticate session to ensure that the session is valid. If it is, use the user_id value to identify the user and send the session_token value to the user in a session cookie. If it isn’t valid, clear the session cookie to log the user out and do not process the request. sessions.authenticate always returns the session token for convenience. We recommend following OWASP's guide on cookie storage.

To extend a session’s lifetime, call authenticate session with the session_duration_minutes parameter. The session will be set to expire that many minutes from now. This will still return the original session token even though its lifetime was extended. To revoke a session, call revoke session with the session ID or session token (whichever is more convenient). We recommend showing the user a list of all their active sessions so they can revoke any they don’t recognize by IP address and/or User-Agent. To attach those values to sessions, add them to the attributes parameter in calls to authenticate magic link or authenticate OTP.

1. Remember me for 30 days after login

   Create a session that expires 30 days (43200 minutes) after initial login

   curl --request POST \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/v1/magic_links/authenticate \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET' \
   	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   	-d '{
   		"token": "SeiGwdj5lKkrEVgcEY3QNJXt6srxS3IK2Nwkar6mXD4=",
   		"session_duration_minutes": 43200
   	}'
   
   curl --request POST \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/sessions/authenticate \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET' \
   	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   	-d '{
   		"session_token": "mZAYn5aLEqKUlZ_Ad9U_fWr38GaAQ1oFAhT8ds245v7Q"
   	}'

2. Remember me for 30 days since you last saw me

   Everytime a session is authenticated, extend it for another 30 days (43200 minutes). This means that if the session continues to be successfully authenticated at least once every 30 days the user will remain logged in indefinitely, unless the session is explicitly revoked.

   curl --request POST \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/v1/magic_links/authenticate \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET' \
   	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   	-d '{
   		"token": "SeiGwdj5lKkrEVgcEY3QNJXt6srxS3IK2Nwkar6mXD4=",
   		"session_duration_minutes": 43200
   	}'
   
   curl --request POST \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/sessions/authenticate \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET' \
   	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   	-d '{
   		"session_token": "mZAYn5aLEqKUlZ_Ad9U_fWr38GaAQ1oFAhT8ds245v7Q",
   		"session_duration_minutes": 43200
   	}'

3. Log out a user

   Log the user out of a given session

   curl --request POST \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/v1/sessions/revoke \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET' \
   	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   	-d '{
   		"session_id": "session-test-fe6c042b-6286-479f-8a4f-b046a6c46509"
   	}'

4. Log a user out of all sessions

   Get all sessions for a given user's ID and individually revoke each of them.

   curl --request GET \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/v1/sessions?user_id=user-test-16d9ba61-97a1-4ba4-9720-b03761dc50c6 \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET'
   
   curl --request POST \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/v1/sessions/revoke \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET' \
   	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   	-d '{
   		"session_id": "session-test-fe6c042b-6286-479f-8a4f-b046a6c46509"
   	}'

5. Multiple Authentication Factors

   Create a single session from multiple authentication factors.

   # Create a new session using the first factor
   curl --request POST \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/v1/magic_links/authenticate \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET' \
   	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   	-d '{
   		"token": "SeiGwdj5lKkrEVgcEY3QNJXt6srxS3IK2Nwkar6mXD4=",
   		"session_duration_minutes": 43200
   	}'
   
   # Use the session token to attach the second factor
   curl --request POST \
   	--url https://test.stytch.com/v1/otps/authenticate \
   	-u 'PROJECT_ID:SECRET' \
   	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   	-d '{
   		"method_id": "phone-number-test-d5a3b680-e8a3-40c0-b815-ab79986666d0",
   		"code": "123456",
   		"session_token": "mZAYn5aLEqKUlZ_Ad9U_fWr38GaAQ1oFAhT8ds245v7Q"
   	}'

You can add custom claims to a Stytch session by including the session_custom_claims argument on any authenticate method. This argument takes in a map where the keys are strings, and the values can be of any type. Custom claims are persisted on the session object and encoded in the JWT.

To update a key in an existing section, supply a new value.

// current claims object {“key_1”: 1, “key_2”: 2}
sessions.authenticate(token, custom_claims={“key_1”: 9})
// resulting claims object {“key_1”: 9, “key_2”: 2}

To delete a key, supply a null value.

// current claims object {“key_1”: 1, “key_2”: 2}
sessions.authenticate(token, custom_claims={“key_1”: null})
// resulting claims object {“key_2”: 2}

Values using reserved claims (“iss", “sub”, “aud”, “exp”, “nbf”, “iat”, “jti”) will be ignored. Total custom claims size cannot exceed four kilobytes. If a value for one of your custom claims is itself a map, you can update and delete values in the same way.

Request: sessions.authenticate(token, custom_claims={"b": null, "c": 3.5, "e": {"nested1": "val1", "nested2": "val2"}})
Response: session.custom_claims = {"c": 3.5, "d": 4, "e": {"nested1": "val1", "nested2": "val2"}}
Request: sessions.authenticate(token, custom_claims={"e": {"nested1": nil, "nested3": "val3"})
Response: session.custom_claims = {"c": 3.5, "d": 4, "e": {"nested2": "val2", "nested3": "val3"}}

• These are considered opaque because they don't contain any information about the user or the underlying session
• Session tokens need to be authenticated via the SessionsAuthenticate endpoint before a user takes any action that requires authentication
• The session token will not authenticate and will be considered invalid if underlying session is revoked

• Your security needs require that your app must never accidentally use a revoked session (i.e. even the small 5 minute grace period of our default JWTs is not acceptable to your app's security)
• Your access to user-side storage is limited and can only store small values
• You don't want to expose the session data (authentication factors) or metadata (timestamps) in user storage

• Contains standard claims as well as information about the Stytch session
• Session JWTs can be authenticated locally without an API call. A session JWT is signed by project-specific keys stored by Stytch. You can retrieve your project's public keyset via our GetJWKS endpoint
• Expires after 5 minutes but can be refreshed via our SessionsAuthenticate endpoint for the duration of the underlying Stytch session
• The session JWT will successfully locally validate until the five minute expiration mark, even if the underlying session is revoked. You can always refresh more frequently than that if you prefer

• Your application would benefit from the performance improvements of validating user sessions without an external network request
• You're using Stytch sessions to authorize actions outside of your app and that authorization works via JWT