Node.js, Express, Passport.js - req.user undefined after login - node.js

Question

I am aware that there are there are loads of questions already on this particular topic and I have gone through all of them and none of the solutions have help so I am aware that this may be a local issue or something very obvious that I'm missing, however any help or tips that anyone could provide would be much appreciated.
I am using passport.js to authenticate users in my express app. The authentication doesn't seem to raise any errors and seems to execute correctly as the users are stored in the session data in the db, e.g.
session: {"cookie":{"originalMaxAge":3600000,"expires":"2023-01-18T15:00:13.646Z","secure":false,"httpOnly":true,"path":"/"},"passport":{"user":"63c69e118d89ef5921231f75"}}
Despite this, if I try to access req.user in any of the controller modules, it appears undefined.
I will paste my code below:
app.js
// Declare imported packages and modules
const express = require('express');
const MongoStore = require('connect-mongo');
const passport = require('passport');
const methodOverride = require('method-override');
const session = require('express-session');
const staticDirectory = require('serve-static');
require('dotenv').config({ path: './config/config.env' });
const dbConnect = require('./config/db');
const authRouter = require('./routes/authRoutes');
const moviesRouter = require('./routes/moviesRoutes');
const userRouter = require('./routes/userRoutes');
const errorHandler = require('./middleware/errorHandler');
// Declare variables for server
const HOSTNAME = process.env.HOST || 'localhost';
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3000;
// Instantiate express app
const app = express();
// Add middleware to instantiated app
app.use(express.json());
app.use(staticDirectory(__dirname + '/public'));
app.use(methodOverride('_method')); // TODO: read about method override
// Add session middleware and declare session parameters
app.use(session({
secret: process.env.SESSION_SECRET,
resave: false,
saveUninitialized: true,
cookie: { maxAge: 1000 * 60 * 60 },
store: MongoStore.create({
mongoUrl: `${process.env.DB_SERVER}/${process.env.database}`,
collection: 'sessions'
})
}));
// Add passport middleware
app.use(passport.initialize());
app.use(passport.session());
// Add routes to defined endpoints
app.use('/auth', authRouter);
app.use('/user/favourites', userRouter);
app.use('/', moviesRouter);
// Add error-handling middleware
app.use(errorHandler);
// Connect the db
dbConnect();
// Run the server
app.listen({ path: HOSTNAME, port: PORT }, (error) => {
if (error) return console.log(error);
console.log(`Server is running on port ${PORT}...`);
});
passport-config.js
onst LocalStrategy = require('passport-local').Strategy;
const bcrypt = require('bcrypt');
const User = require('../models/User');
// Middleware function to initialise passport
const initialize = (passport) => {
// Defining the fields used to login
const customFields = {
usernameField: 'email',
passwordField: 'password'
};
// Function to determin how authentication is handled
const authenticateUser = async (email, password, done) => {
// Finding user in the db
const user = await User.findOne({ email: email });
if (!user) {
// No user found returns an error
return done(null, false, { message: `No user with email ${email} found` });
}
try {
// Checking password entered for user hashed against the stored hash
if (await bcrypt.compare(password, user.hash)) {
return done(null, user);
} else {
// return an error if the hashes don't match
return done(null, false, { message: 'Password incorrect' });
}
} catch (error) {
return done(error);
}
}
passport.use(new LocalStrategy(customFields, authenticateUser));
// Built-in passport.js method to add user id in session cookie info
passport.serializeUser((user, done) => {
return done(null, user.id);
});
// Built-in passport.js method to extract user id from session to obtain user info
passport.deserializeUser(async (id, done) => {
const user = await User.findOne({ _id: id });
return done(null, user);
})
}
module.exports = initialize;
In my authControllers file, I have tried a couple of options:
exports.login = (req, res, next) => {
try {
// Login using passport authenticate function
passport.authenticate('local', {
successRedirect: '/',
failureRedirect: '/'
})(req, res, next);
} catch (error) {
next(error);
}
}
and
exports.login = (req, res, next) => {
try {
// Login using passport authenticate function
passport.authenticate('local', (error, user, info) => {
if (error) return next(error);
if (!user) return res.redirect('/');
req.login(user, (err) => {
if (err) return next(err);
res.redirect('/');
})
})(req, res, next);
} catch (error) {
next(error);
}
}
I have also tried importing cors module and adding
app.use(
cors({
origin: `http://localhost:${process.env.PORT}`,
credentials: true,
})
);
and also adding
app.use((req, res, next) => {
res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", req.headers.origin);
res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Credentials", true);
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'GET,PUT,POST,DELETE');
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Headers', 'X-Requested-With, X-HTTP-Method-Override, Content-Type, Accept');
if ('OPTIONS' == req.method) {
return res.send(200);
}
next();
});
I have also tried adding { session: true } to the options for passport.authenticate(), switching from express-session to cookie-session, adding bodyParser middleware, adding cookieParser middleware. I checked the order of app.use(session({...})) and the passport functions and tried removing some of the middleware to see if it was interfering. I also tried manually saving the user in the login function and adding the user to res.locals and without results. And also importing passport-config.js after the passport functions:
app.use(passport.initialize());
app.use(passport.session());
const initializePassport = require('./config/passport-config')(passport);
All of which without results.
Sorry for the long question and as I said, any insight on what is going wrong here would be much appreciated. Thanks!