Migration Guide from v2 -> v3

Version 3 adds several new, frequently requested features. To do so, it introduces a few breaking changes. We’ve worked to keep these as minimal as possible. This guide explains the breaking changes and how you can quickly update your code.

Token.Claims is now an interface type

The most requested feature from the 2.0 verison of this library was the ability to provide a custom type to the JSON parser for claims. This was implemented by introducing a new interface, Claims, to replace map[string]interface{}. We also included two concrete implementations of Claims: MapClaims and StandardClaims.

MapClaims is an alias for map[string]interface{} with built in validation behavior. It is the default claims type when using Parse. The usage is unchanged except you must type cast the claims property.

The old example for parsing a token looked like this..

	if token, err := jwt.Parse(tokenString, keyLookupFunc); err == nil {
		fmt.Printf("Token for user %v expires %v", token.Claims["user"], token.Claims["exp"])
	}

is now directly mapped to…

	if token, err := jwt.Parse(tokenString, keyLookupFunc); err == nil {
		claims := token.Claims.(jwt.MapClaims)
		fmt.Printf("Token for user %v expires %v", claims["user"], claims["exp"])
	}

StandardClaims is designed to be embedded in your custom type. You can supply a custom claims type with the new ParseWithClaims function. Here’s an example of using a custom claims type.

	type MyCustomClaims struct {
		User string
		*StandardClaims
	}
	
	if token, err := jwt.ParseWithClaims(tokenString, &MyCustomClaims{}, keyLookupFunc); err == nil {
		claims := token.Claims.(*MyCustomClaims)
		fmt.Printf("Token for user %v expires %v", claims.User, claims.StandardClaims.ExpiresAt)
	}

ParseFromRequest has been moved

To keep this library focused on the tokens without becoming overburdened with complex request processing logic, ParseFromRequest and its new companion ParseFromRequestWithClaims have been moved to a subpackage, request. The method signatues have also been augmented to receive a new argument: Extractor.

Extractors do the work of picking the token string out of a request. The interface is simple and composable.

This simple parsing example:

	if token, err := jwt.ParseFromRequest(tokenString, req, keyLookupFunc); err == nil {
		fmt.Printf("Token for user %v expires %v", token.Claims["user"], token.Claims["exp"])
	}

is directly mapped to:

	if token, err := request.ParseFromRequest(req, request.OAuth2Extractor, keyLookupFunc); err == nil {
		claims := token.Claims.(jwt.MapClaims)
		fmt.Printf("Token for user %v expires %v", claims["user"], claims["exp"])
	}

There are several concrete Extractor types provided for your convenience:

• HeaderExtractor will search a list of headers until one contains content.
• ArgumentExtractor will search a list of keys in request query and form arguments until one contains content.
• MultiExtractor will try a list of Extractors in order until one returns content.
• AuthorizationHeaderExtractor will look in the Authorization header for a Bearer token.
• OAuth2Extractor searches the places an OAuth2 token would be specified (per the spec): Authorization header and access_token argument
• PostExtractionFilter wraps an Extractor, allowing you to process the content before it’s parsed. A simple example is stripping the Bearer text from a header

RSA signing methods no longer accept []byte keys

Due to a critical vulnerability, we’ve decided the convenience of accepting []byte instead of rsa.PublicKey or rsa.PrivateKey isn’t worth the risk of misuse.

To replace this behavior, we’ve added two helper methods: ParseRSAPrivateKeyFromPEM(key []byte) (*rsa.PrivateKey, error) and ParseRSAPublicKeyFromPEM(key []byte) (*rsa.PublicKey, error). These are just simple helpers for unpacking PEM encoded PKCS1 and PKCS8 keys. If your keys are encoded any other way, all you need to do is convert them to the crypto/rsa package’s types.

	func keyLookupFunc(*Token) (interface{}, error) {
		// Don't forget to validate the alg is what you expect:
		if _, ok := token.Method.(*jwt.SigningMethodRSA); !ok {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("Unexpected signing method: %v", token.Header["alg"])
		}
		
		// Look up key 
		key, err := lookupPublicKey(token.Header["kid"])
		if err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}
		
		// Unpack key from PEM encoded PKCS8
		return jwt.ParseRSAPublicKeyFromPEM(key)
	}