How to secure feature for authenticated users only in Meanjs when using angularjs - angularjs

Question

I am working on my first app, and have started with the front-end and angularjs. In general I have found it very intuitive, but the relationship between backend and frontend is where things start to blur for me.
I have now gotten to the point where I want to provide slightly different functionality on some pages depending on whether the user is authenticated or not (in this case the ability to edit some form fields in a form).
From the public angularjs side it seems easy enough to write a basic if statement to provide different functionality to authenticated users (see basic attempt below) but as this is a client side function, how do I prevent a user spoofing authentication to edit things I don't want them to (save to database).
angular.module('core').controller('myCtrl', ['$scope', 'Authentication', 'Menus',
function($scope, Authentication, Menus) {
$scope.authentication = Authentication;
if(typeof $scope.authentication.user == "object"){
// behaviour for authenticated
}else{
// for unauthenticated
}
}
I am new to mean, meanjs and node.js in general, being primarily a php guy, so please be gentle if my question is way off base.

Answer 1

I suggest using passport a npm module for user authentication. Here's some code to get you started. Also take a look at this scotch.io tutorial
// load all the things we need
var LocalStrategy = require('passport-local').Strategy;
// load up the user model
var User = require('../app/models/user');
// expose this function to our app using module.exports
module.exports = function(passport) {
passport.serializeUser(function(user, done) {
done(null, user.id);
});
// used to deserialize the user
passport.deserializeUser(function(id, done) {
User.findById(id, function(err, user) {
done(err, user);
});
});
passport.use('local-signup', new LocalStrategy({
usernameField : 'email',
passwordField : 'password',
passReqToCallback : true // allows us to pass back the entire request to the callback
},
function(req, email, password, done) {
// asynchronous
// User.findOne wont fire unless data is sent back
process.nextTick(function() {
// find a user whose email is the same as the forms email
// we are checking to see if the user trying to login already exists
User.findOne({ 'local.email' : email }, function(err, user) {
// if there are any errors, return the error
if (err)
return done(err);
// check to see if theres already a user with that email
if (user) {
return done(null, false, req.flash('signupMessage', 'That email is already taken.'));
} else {
// if there is no user with that email
// create the user
var newUser = new User();
// set the user's local credentials
newUser.local.email = email;
newUser.local.password = newUser.generateHash(password);
// save the user
newUser.save(function(err) {
if (err)
throw err;
return done(null, newUser);
});
}
});
});
}));
passport.use('local-login', new LocalStrategy({
// by default, local strategy uses username and password, we will override with email
usernameField : 'email',
passwordField : 'password',
passReqToCallback : true // allows us to pass back the entire request to the callback
},
function(req, email, password, done) { // callback with email and password from our form
// find a user whose email is the same as the forms email
// we are checking to see if the user trying to login already exists
User.findOne({ 'local.email' : email }, function(err, user) {
// if there are any errors, return the error before anything else
if (err)
return done(err);
// if the user is found but the password is wrong
if (!user || !user.validPassword(password))
return done(null, false, req.flash('loginMessage', 'Oops! Wrong username or password.')); // create the loginMessage and save it to session as flashdata
// all is well, return successful user
return done(null, user);
});
}));
};