Technical Blogger - Sulochana Basavala

  Securing React and Spring Boot with JWT & Refresh Tokens (Spring Security 6) In our previous post, we walked through connecting React Hook Form to a Spring Boot REST API with DTO validation and global exception handling . Once an API reliably accepts and validates incoming payloads, the very next challenge every full-stack developer faces is: How do we securely authenticate requests without breaking the user experience? When I first integrated JWTs into full-stack applications, I used a single token with a 24-hour expiration. It worked fine in early local testing, but it quickly exposed real architectural risks: If that token was ever compromised, an attacker had a 24-hour open window with zero server-side revocation control. Shortening the lifespan to 15 minutes solved the vulnerability, but suddenly users were being abruptly kicked out to the login screen mid-workflow whenever their token expired. The industry-standard solution is a dual-token lifecycle : short-lived Access...

  Connecting React Hook Form to Spring Boot: Clean DTO Validation & Global Exception Handling In our previous tutorial https://sulochanabasavala.blogspot.com/2026/10/advanced-react-hook-form-custom-async-validation.html , we built custom synchronous and asynchronous validation pipelines on the frontend using React Hook Form . While client-side validation provides immediate feedback, frontend validation can never replace server-side validation . Users can bypass UI rules via direct API calls, browser dev tools, or automation scripts. In this guide, we will connect our React form to a robust Spring Boot REST API using Java Bean Validation ( @Valid ) and capture errors using a centralized @RestControllerAdvice ( MethodArgumentNotValidException ). 1. The Architecture: End-to-End Flow React Frontend: Captures form data via react-hook-form , performs initial validation, and sends an HTTP POST request with a JSON payload. Spring Boot Controller: Intercepts the request and trigge...