Session tokens
When a user is authenticated in your application, Clerk generates a short-lived session token that you can use to authenticate requests to your backend. This token is a JSON Web Token (JWT) that contains information about the user and their session.
Read more about Clerk session tokens and how they work in the guide on how Clerk works.
Default claims
Every generated token has default claims that cannot be overridden by templates. Clerk's default claims include:
The o
claim, or organization claim, is only included if the user is part of an organization and that organization is active. Its value is an object that contains the following properties:
The act
(actor) claim is only included if the user is impersonating another user. It's value is an object that contains the following properties:
Every generated token has default claims that cannot be overridden by templates. Clerk's default claims include:
The following claims are only included if the user is part of an organization and that organization is active:
The act
(actor) claim is only included if the user is impersonating another user. It's value is an object that contains the following properties:
Custom claims
If you would like to add custom claims to your session token, you can customize it.
You can also create custom tokens using a JWT template.
Size limitations
Clerk stores the session token in a cookie, and most browsers limit cookie size to 4KB. Exceeding this limit will cause the cookie to not be set, which will break your app as Clerk depends on cookies to work properly.
A session token with the default session claims won't run into this issue, as this configuration produces a cookie significantly smaller than 4KB. However, you must consider this limit when implementing a custom session token. After accounting for the size of Clerk's default claims, the cookie can support up to 1.2KB of custom claims.
Claims to monitor for size limits:
user.organizations
user.public_metadata
user.unsafe_metadata
org.public_metadata
org_membership.public_metadata
If you add any of these custom claims in your token, use caution to ensure the stored data doesn't exceed the size limit. It's highly recommended to store the extra data in your own database instead of storing it in metadata in the session token. If this isn't an option, you can move particularly large claims like these out of the token and fetch them using a separate API call from your backend.
Example
It's recommended to keep the total size of custom claims in the session token under 1.2KB. The following example shows how to move particularly large claims out of the session token and fetch them using a separate API call from your backend. The limitations of this approach are that if you make this call to Clerk's Backend API frequently, you risk hitting rate limits and it's also slower than making a database query. We highly recommend storing the extra data in your own database instead of storing it in metadata in the session token.
For example, if you were storing several fields in user.public_metadata
, like this:
// user.public_metadata
{
onboardingComplete: true,
birthday: '2000-01-01',
country: 'Canada',
bio: 'This is a bio -- imagine it is 6kb of written info',
}
Instead of storing all of that data in the session token, and possibly exceeding the 4KB limit, like this:
// Custom claims in the session token
{
"metadata": "{{user.public_metadata}}"
}
You could store only the necessary data in the session token - for example, just the onboardingComplete
field - like this:
// Custom claims in the session token
{
"onboardingComplete": "{{user.public_metadata.onboardingComplete}}"
}
If you need to access the other fields, you can fetch them using a separate API call from your backend. The following example uses the method to access the current user's , which includes the publicMetadata
field.
import { auth, clerkClient } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'
export async function GET() {
// Use `auth()` to get the user's ID
const { userId } = await auth()
// Protect the route by checking if the user is signed in
if (!userId) {
return new NextResponse('Unauthorized', { status: 401 })
}
const client = await clerkClient()
// Use the Backend SDK's `getUser()` method to get the Backend User object
const user = await client.users.getUser(userId)
// Return the Backend User object
return NextResponse.json({ user: user }, { status: 200 })
}
import { getAuth, clerkClient } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'
import type { NextApiRequest, NextApiResponse } from 'next'
export default async function handler(req: NextApiRequest, res: NextApiResponse) {
// Use getAuth() to get the user's ID
const { userId } = getAuth(req)
// Protect the route by checking if the user is signed in
if (!userId) {
return res.status(401).json({ error: 'Unauthorized' })
}
// Initialize the Backend SDK
const client = await clerkClient()
// Get the user's full Backend User object
const user = await client.users.getUser(userId)
return res.status(200).json({ user })
}
import { clerkClient } from '@clerk/astro/server'
export async function GET(context) {
// Use `locals.auth()` to get the user's ID
const { userId } = context.locals.auth()
// Protect the route by checking if the user is signed in
if (!userId) {
return new Response('Unauthorized', { status: 401 })
}
// Use the Backend SDK's `getUser()` method to get the Backend User object
const user = await clerkClient(context).users.getUser(userId)
// Return the Backend User object
return new Response(JSON.stringify({ user }))
}
import { createClerkClient, getAuth } from '@clerk/express'
import express from 'express'
const app = express()
const clerkClient = createClerkClient({ secretKey: process.env.CLERK_SECRET_KEY })
app.get('/user', async (req, res) => {
// Use `getAuth()` to get the user's ID
const { userId } = getAuth(req)
// Protect the route by checking if the user is signed in
if (!userId) {
res.status(401).json({ error: 'User not authenticated' })
}
// Use the Backend SDK's `getUser()` method to get the Backend User object
const user = await clerkClient.users.getUser(userId)
// Return the Backend User object
res.json(user)
})
import { redirect } from 'react-router'
import { getAuth } from '@clerk/react-router/ssr.server'
import { createClerkClient } from '@clerk/react-router/api.server'
import type { Route } from './+types/profile'
export async function loader(args: Route.LoaderArgs) {
// Use `getAuth()` to get the user's ID
const { userId } = await getAuth(args)
// Protect the route by checking if the user is signed in
if (!userId) {
return redirect('/sign-in?redirect_url=' + args.request.url)
}
// Use the Backend SDK's `getUser()` method to get the Backend User object
const user = await createClerkClient({ secretKey: process.env.CLERK_SECRET_KEY }).users.getUser(
userId,
)
// Return the Backend User object
return {
user: JSON.stringify(user),
}
}
import { LoaderFunction, redirect } from '@remix-run/node'
import { getAuth } from '@clerk/remix/ssr.server'
import { createClerkClient } from '@clerk/remix/api.server'
export const loader: LoaderFunction = async (args) => {
// Use `getAuth()` to get the user's ID
const { userId } = await getAuth(args)
// If there is no userId, then redirect to sign-in route
if (!userId) {
return redirect('/sign-in?redirect_url=' + args.request.url)
}
// Use the Backend SDK's `getUser()` method to get the Backend User object
const user = await createClerkClient({ secretKey: process.env.CLERK_SECRET_KEY }).users.getUser(
userId,
)
// Return the Backend User object
return { serialisedUser: JSON.stringify(user) }
}
import { ActionFunction, redirect } from '@remix-run/node'
import { getAuth } from '@clerk/remix/ssr.server'
import { createClerkClient } from '@clerk/remix/api.server'
export const action: ActionFunction = async (args) => {
// Use `getAuth()` to get the user's ID
const { userId } = await getAuth(args)
// If there is no userId, then redirect to sign-in route
if (!userId) {
return redirect('/sign-in?redirect_url=' + args.request.url)
}
// Prepare the data for the mutation
const params = { firstName: 'John', lastName: 'Wicker' }
// // Use the Backend SDK's `updateUser()` method to update the Backend User object
const updatedUser = await createClerkClient({
secretKey: process.env.CLERK_SECRET_KEY,
}).users.updateUser(userId, params)
// Return the updated user
return { serialisedUser: JSON.stringify(updatedUser) }
}
import { createClerkClient } from '@clerk/backend'
import { json } from '@tanstack/react-start'
import { createAPIFileRoute } from '@tanstack/react-start/api'
import { getAuth } from '@clerk/tanstack-react-start/server'
export const Route = createAPIFileRoute('/api/example')({
GET: async ({ request, params }) => {
// Use `getAuth()` to get the user's ID
const { userId } = await getAuth(req)
// Protect the route by checking if the user is signed in
if (!userId) {
return json({ error: 'Unauthorized' }, { status: 401 })
}
// Instantiate the Backend SDK
const clerkClient = createClerkClient({ secretKey: import.meta.env.CLERK_SECRET_KEY })
// Use the Backend SDK's `getUser()` method to get the Backend User object
const user = userId ? await clerkClient.users.getUser(userId) : null
// Return the Backend User object
return json({ user })
},
})
Validate session tokens
If you're using the middleware provided by our Clerk SDKs, validating session tokens is handled automatically in every request. If you're not using the middleware, you can still use the respective helpers provided by the SDKs to validate the tokens.
To learn how to manually verify a session token, refer to the dedicated guide.
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