JSON Web Token (JWT)
A self-contained, signed token format used for authentication and authorization — common in stateless APIs.
In long form.
A JWT has three parts (header, payload, signature) joined by dots and base64-encoded. The payload contains claims like user ID, role, expiration. The signature, computed with a secret or RSA key, lets the server verify the token without a database lookup — making JWTs convenient for stateless authentication. Caveats: JWT payloads are not encrypted by default, just signed (anyone can read them); revocation is hard (you can't invalidate a stateless token short of expiration); short expiry plus refresh-token rotation is best practice.
JWTs are the right fit for service-to-service authentication and for browser sessions where you want to verify in middleware (e.g. at the edge) without a database call. For long-lived browser sessions, server-side sessions backed by Redis are often simpler and more revokable.
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