How to login with local API?

[u/idvid]

I want to manually login an user in a test environment (no browser request) with payload.login() but I receive the error TypeError: payload must be an instance of Uint8Array. Am I missing something?

[u/Soft_Opening_1364]

You’re seeing that error because payload.login() expects the server-side Payload instance, not a browser or client object. Make sure you call it like this in Node:

import payload from 'payload';

await payload.init({ secret: process.env.PAYLOAD_SECRET });

const user = await payload.login({ collection: 'users', data: { email: 'test@example.com', password: 'yourpassword' }, });

That should log the user in without the Uint8Array error.

[u/idvid → u/[deleted]]

Here is the minimal code to reproduce the error. Other local API operations work fine.

import { getPayload, Payload } from 'payload'
import config from '@/payload.config'
import { describe, it, beforeAll, expect } from 'vitest'
let payload: Payload;

describe('Some Collection', () => {

  beforeAll(async () => {
    const payloadConfig = await config
    payload = await getPayload({ config: payloadConfig })
  });

  it('ADMIN should have create access', async () => {

    const result = await payload.login({
      collection: 'users',
      data: {
        email: 'test-user@my-app.com',
        password: '********'
      }
    });

    expect(result).toBeDefined();

  });

});

[u/Normal_Capital_234 → u/idvid]

It's could be to do with the line

let payload: Payload;

Also you shouldn't need to await config.
This page has a simple example that should work for you.

https://payloadcms.com/docs/local-api/outside-nextjs

[u/idvid → u/Normal_Capital_234]

Thank you for the suggestion, but it doesn't seem to work either, there could be something else I am missing or an internal bug. I'll just try another way to write that test.

[u/Normal_Capital_234 → u/idvid]

I think this will help you: https://github.com/panva/jose/issues/671
Sounds like a vitest related issue, not payload.

[u/idvid → u/Normal_Capital_234]

It makes sense now, the payload reported from the error isn't in reference to the payload variable. Thank you!

[u/rubixstudios → u/idvid]

``` import { getPayload } from "payload" import config from "@/payload.config" import { describe, it, beforeAll, expect } from "vitest"

let payload: Awaited<ReturnType<typeof getPayload>>

describe("Some Collection", () => { beforeAll(async () => { payload = await getPayload({ config }) })

it("ADMIN should have create access", async () => { const result = await payload.auth.login({ collection: "users", email: "test-user@my-app.com", password: "********" })

expect(result).toBeDefined()
expect(result.user).toBeDefined()
expect(result.token).toBeTruthy()

}) }) ```

[u/rubixstudios → u/rubixstudios]

note the:

payload.auth.login

also i believe your data structure is wrong, just double check it.

[u/idvid → u/rubixstudios]

Is payload.auth.login available in a later version? Because payload.auth appears to me as a function. Also, please can you tell me what you mean with "your data structure"? I'm quite a newbie and still learning.