Cookie not set in request with NodeJS and NextJS

I'm developing a fullstack app with Node + Express backend and NextJS front end (separate servers) and am having trouble requesting the browser to attach the cookie vended down as part of the response header from the node server. Here's the setup:

Node server is running on localhost:3000 and NextJs server is running on localhost:3001.
I have set up alias in etc/hosts to route someAlias.com to 127.0.0.1.

Using the front end UI (port 3001) I was able to vend the cookie with JsHttp's cookie module with the following code from the backend (port 3000):

import { serialize } from 'cookie';
...
const cookie = serialize(TOKEN_NAME, TOKEN_VAL, {
  httpOnly: true,
  sameSite: 'none',
});

I was able to observe the Set-Cookie header in the response.

However, in the subsequent requests, I did not see the cookie being attached. I have tried fiddling with the above cookie serialization params with no success:

Here are the arguments I've tried:

domain: ['.someAlias.com:3000', '.someAlias.com:3001']
path: '/'
domain: '.someAlias.com'

I have a feeling it might just be due to front end and back end server ports being different, but all requests have been initiated on the client side going to localhost:3000 (backend port). So not sure what I've possibly done wrong here.

====== UPDATE =======

I've run a couple more experiments, and found out that when I'm accessing a URL directly, NextJs renders the page server-side. When I'm transitioning between pages within the app, the page is rendered client-side where it queries the backend port 3000 directly. Unfortunately in neither scenario did I see any cookie being set...

Solution 1:

SAMESITE NONE

If you use SameSite=none you also need to use Secure, meaning SSL must also be used. You are then saying that your 2 servers are from unrelated domains, which is probably not what you want, since browsers will drop cookies aggressively.

LOCAL PC OPTIONS

Use these settings initially on your development computer, and ensure that all URLs used in the browser and Ajax calls use http://somealias.com:3000 and http://somealias.com:3001 rather than localhost. Cookies will then stick on a development computer.

Domain=.somealias.com
Path=/
SameSite=strict
HTTP Only

DEPLOYED OPTIONS

When you deploy to a proper environment, also use SSL and set the cookie option Secure. Most importantly, the two domains must meet hosting prerequisites of sharing the same base domain, eg:

https://www.example.com
https://api.example.com

This ensures that cookies issued are considered first party and in the same site, so that they are not dropped. If preconditions are not met, there is nothing you can do in code to fix the problem.

SIMILAR RESOURCE

This Curity code example uses local development domains and same site cookie settings similar to those I've used above and may be useful to compare against.

Cookie not set in request with NodeJS and NextJS

Solution 1:

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