trouble integrating express with passport - reactjs

Question

I hope someone can help me out as ive spent far too long scratching my head over this issue. I have a small React, Express, MongoDb app which i want to integrate with Passport.js. However I just cannot get the passport to authenticate.
I have a controller set up for a route /login. I have a console log at the start of the file so I know that the code goes into that block. However the code doesnt enter the passport authenticate block.
const bcrypt = require('bcrypt');
const user = db.user;
const passport = require('passport');
exports.login = async (req, res, next) => {
console.log('inside login controller');
passport.authenticate('local', function (err, user, info) {
console.log('inside passport');
req.login(user, function (err) {
console.log('inside req login');
if (err) {
return res.status(400).json({ errors: err });
}
return res
.status(200)
.json({ success: `logged in ${user.id}` })
.redirect('/users/' + user);
})(req, res, next);
});
};
My server file looks like this (omitted a lot of stuff to save space but the gist is as follows):
const passport = require('./passport/setup');
const initialisePassport = require('./passport/setup');
const auth = require('./controller/user.controller');
app.use(
session({
secret: 'a_very_special_secret',
resave: false,
saveUninitialized: true,
expires: new Date(Date.now() + 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000), // 24 hours
store: new MongoStore({ mongooseConnection: mongoose.connection }),
})
);
app.use(cookieParser('a_very_special_secret'));
app.use(initialisePassport.initialize());
app.use(passport.session());
The last file is the passport setup file which is here:
const bcrypt = require('bcrypt');
const db = require('../models');
const User = db.user;
const passport = require('passport');
const LocalStrategy = require('passport-local').Strategy;
passport.serializeUser((user, done) => {
done(null, user.id);
});
passport.deserializeUser((id, done) => {
User.findById(id, (err, user) => {
done(err, user);
});
});
//Local strategy
passport.use(
new LocalStrategy({ usernameField: 'email' }, (email, password, done) => {
console.log('inside passport strat');
User.findOne({ email })
.then((user) => {
bcrypt.compare(password, user.password, (err, isMatch) => {
if (err) throw err;
if (isMatch) {
return done(null, user);
} else {
return done(null, false, { message: 'Wrong password' });
}
});
})
.catch((err) => {
return done(null, false, { message: err });
});
})
);
module.exports = passport;
Id love a helping hand on where im going wrong with this. So basically when i post to the route via the front end I get the message in my console that im inside the login controller but the authentication process doesnt happen.