Verifies a JWT signature and validates all claims, returning the decoded payload if successful.

Use this to validate incoming JWTs from clients, ensuring they’re authentic and haven’t been tampered with.

Security Considerations

• Implement appropriate claims validation (expiration, issuer, audience)
• Handle verification failures securely (don’t leak information)
• Consider rate limiting to prevent brute force attacks

Example

// Define expected claims for validation
let claims = [
  claim.expires_at(max_age: duration.hours(1), leeway: duration.minutes(5)),
  claim.issuer("my-app", []),
]

// Parse and validate the JWT
case ywt.decode(jwt_token, using: payload_decoder, claims:, keys: [verify_key]) {
  Ok(payload) -> {
    // JWT is valid, use the payload
    let user_id = // extract user ID from payload
    authorize_request(user_id)
  }
  Error(_) -> {
    // JWT is invalid - reject the request
    unauthorized_response()
  }
}

💡 Best Practice: Always validate JWTs on every request and never trust client-provided tokens without verification.

Extracts payload from a JWT without verifying its signature or claims.

🚨 USE WITH EXTREME CAUTION Only use this when you need to inspect tokens from trusted sources where signature verification is handled elsewhere.

Security Considerations

• NEVER use this in production for authentication
• Tokens could be forged or tampered with
• No expiration or claim validation is performed
• Only use when signature validation happens at a different layer
• Consider this as dangerous as accepting any user input

Creates a signed JWT containing the specified payload and claims.

Signed JWTs prevent actors without access to the SignKey from modifying it. This can be verified using the corresponding VerifyKey.

Security Considerations

• JWTs are signed, not encrypted - all data is publicly readable
• Never include sensitive data like passwords or personal information
• Keep payloads small to avoid large tokens
• Include appropriate expiration times in your claims
• Use strong signing keys and rotate them regularly

If a field is present in claims as well as the payload, the payload takes precedence.

Example

// Create a user session token
let payload = [
  #("sub", json.string("user_12345")),
  #("role", json.string("developer")),
  #("permissions", json.array([json.string("read"), json.string("write")]))
]

let claims = [
  claim.issued_at(),
  claim.expires_at(max_age: duration.hours(1), leeway: duration.minutes(5)),
  claim.issuer("my-app", []),
]

ywt.encode(payload: payload, claims: claims, key: sign_key)
// Returns: "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ..."

⚠️ Remember: Anyone can decode and read JWT contents. Only include data you’re comfortable being public.

Generates a new cryptographically secure signing key for the specified algorithm.

This function creates fresh signing keys with appropriate parameters for each algorithm type. All keys are generated using cryptographically secure random number generators and follow current security best practices.

The generated keys will have a random id set that can be used to identify the key during key rotation.

Usage

Use this for key generation in development, testing, or when implementing key rotation systems. For production use, consider generating keys offline and storing them in secure key management systems.

Key Parameters

• HMAC: Full-entropy random secrets of appropriate length (at least 32/48/64 bytes)
• RSA: 4096-bit modulus with secure random prime generation
• ECDSA: Secure random private scalars on specified curves. The digest type matches the selected curve.

Creates a cryptographic signature for the given message using the specified signing key.

This is a low-level function that performs the actual cryptographic signing operation.

Usage

This function is primarily used internally by higher-level JWT functions. Use this directly only when you need raw signature operations outside of JWT context.

Security Considerations

• Never sign untrusted or unvalidated input data
• Ensure signing keys are stored securely and accessed only by authorized code

Example

let message = <<"Hello, world!":utf8>>
let signing_key = load_secure_signing_key()

let signature = ywt.sign_bits(message, signing_key)
// signature is raw bytes that can be verified with corresponding verify key

⚠️ Warning: This function performs raw cryptographic operations. Most applications should use the higher-level JWT functions instead.

Creates a base64url-encoded signature for a UTF-8 string message.

This is a convenience wrapper around sign_bits that handles string encoding and base64url encoding of the signature, commonly used for signing JWT components.

Usage

Use this when you need to sign string data and want the signature in base64url format for use in web contexts like JWTs or HTTP headers.

Security Considerations

• Same security considerations as sign_bits apply
• The string is encoded as UTF-8 before signing
• Verify signatures using the corresponding verify_string function

Example

let jwt_payload = "eyJzdWIiOiIxMjM0NTY3ODkwIn0"
let signing_key = load_jwt_signing_key()

let signature = sign_string(jwt_payload, signing_key))
// signature is base64url-encoded string ready for JWT use

💡 Note: The returned signature is base64url-encoded (URL-safe, no padding) as required by JWT and other web standards.

Verifies a cryptographic signature against a message using the specified verification key.

This is a low-level function that performs the actual cryptographic verification. Returns True if the signature is valid for the given message and key, False otherwise.

Usage

Use this for raw signature verification operations. The verification algorithm is determined by the key type and must match the algorithm used for signing.

Example

let message = <<"Hello, world!":utf8>>
let signature = // ... received signature bytes
let verify_key = load_verification_key()

let is_valid = verify_bits(message, signature, verify_key)
case is_valid {
  True -> process_verified_message(message)
  False -> reject_invalid_signature()
}

🔒 Critical: Never trust data with invalid signatures. A False result indicates potential tampering or use of wrong keys.

Verifies a base64url-encoded signature against a UTF-8 string message.

This is a convenience wrapper around verify_bits that handles string encoding and base64url decoding of the signature. Commonly used for verifying JWT signatures.

Usage

Use this when verifying signatures that are base64url-encoded, such as those from JWTs or other web-based cryptographic protocols.

Security Considerations

• Same security considerations as verify_bits apply
• Invalid base64url encoding in the signature automatically returns False

Example

let payload = "eyJzdWIiOiIxMjM0NTY3ODkwIn0"
let signature = "base64url-encoded-signature-string"
let verify_key = load_jwt_verification_key()

let is_valid = verify_string(payload, signature, verify_key)
case is_valid {
  True -> {
    // Signature is valid, payload can be trusted
    process_authenticated_request(payload)
  }
  False -> {
    // Signature invalid - reject the request
    return_authentication_error()
  }
}

⚠️ Important: Malformed base64url signatures return False rather than causing errors, ensuring consistent handling of invalid input.