Introduction
Authentication is one of those things that looks simple in a tutorial and becomes surprisingly complex in production. Between token storage, CSRF protection, refresh flows, and protected routing, there are many places to get it wrong—and getting it wrong has real security consequences.
In two earlier posts, I covered pieces of this puzzle: Enabling CSRF in a JWT-Based React + Spring Boot Application and Storing Personal Information in React: sessionStorage vs Context API. This post ties those threads together into a complete, end-to-end authentication flow you can adapt for enterprise applications.
We'll walk through the full journey: login → token issuance → secure storage → protected routes → token refresh → logout.
Architecture Overview
