Passport.js - req.session.passport.user is not showing up - node.js

Question

I am using Passport.js with Express - for some reason the req.session.passport.user value is not present, when it should be, as you can see:
here is my passport configuration:
passport.serializeUser(function (user, done) {
console.log(colors.bgRed('serialize user called, user:', user));
done(null, user._id);
});
passport.deserializeUser(function (id, done) {
console.log(colors.bgRed('deserialize user called, user_id:', id));
UserModel.getNewUser().findById(id, function (err, user) {
console.log(colors.bgRed('deserialize find user called, user:', user));
done(err, user);
});
});
passport.use('local', new LocalStrategy(function (username, password, done) {
UserModel.getNewUser().findOne({
username: username
}, function (err, user) {
if (err) {
return done(err);
}
if (!user) {
return done(null, false, {
message: 'Incorrect username.'
});
}
if (!user.validPassword(password)) {
return done(null, false, {
message: 'Incorrect password.'
});
}
// req.user = user;
return done(null, user);
});
}));
does anyone know what could be going wrong? My only guess is that I might need to deserialize using the Session object, instead of the user id, but that I believe is incorrect. I do know for a fact that deserializeUser and serializeUser are not being called at all.

Answer 1

It was hard to find an answer for this online, so I think one should go here.
The problem was because instead of using this:
app.post('/login', passport.authenticate('local', { successRedirect: '/',
failureRedirect: '/login' }));
...I decided to use this style of call with Passport:
app.get('/login', function(req, res, next) {
passport.authenticate('local', function(err, user, info) {
if (err) { return next(err); }
if (!user) { return res.redirect('/login'); }
req.logIn(user, function(err) {
if (err) { return next(err); }
return res.redirect('/users/' + user.username);
});
})(req, res, next);
});
Originally my code was like so:
passport.authenticate('local', function (err, user, info) {
if (err) {
return next(err);
}
if (!user) {
registerUser(req,res,next);
}
else{
res.locals.loggedInUser = user._doc;
res.json({alreadyRegistered: !justRegistered,msg:user._doc});
}
})(req, res, next);
but then I updated it with req.logIn like so:
passport.authenticate('local', function (err, user, info) {
if (err) {
return next(err);
}
if (!user) {
console.log('no account found, so we will register user as expected...');
registerUser(req,res,next);
}
else{
req.logIn(user, function (err) { //this is crucial
if(err){
return next(err);
}
res.locals.loggedInUser = user._doc;
res.json({alreadyRegistered: !justRegistered,msg:user._doc});
});
}
})(req, res, next);
and now it works - should have followed the docs better. I recommend that Jared Hansson puts in "this is crucial" in the docs where I have just labeled it above. Otherwise, yes I should have followed the docs more closely.