Passport.authenticate() using the local strategy

See more:

MongoDB

Express

mongoose

I am using passport to implement a login function on my application. However, every time I try to authenticate the user, I cannot get passed the authentication and am redirected to the failure URL. I have confirmed that there is a user in the MongoDB database and the user supplied password is correct. However, I cannot get past the passport authentication. Can anyone please help me out ?

This is my index.js

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const path = require('path');
const ejsMate = require('ejs-mate');
const loginRoutes = require("./routes/login");
const User = require('./models/users');
const session = require('express-session');
const userRoutes = require('./routes/user');
const passport = require('passport');
const localStrategy = require('passport-local');

sessionConfig = {
    name: "session",
    secret: 'BetterSecret',
    resave: false,
    saveUninitialized: true,
    cookie: {
        httpOnly: true,
        expires: Date.now() + 604800000, //Date.NOW + No. of Miliseconds in the week
        maxAge: 604800000
    }
};

//Connection strings only beyond this line
mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost:27017/myLoc').then(console.log("DB connected")).catch(error => handleError(error));
app.listen(5500, (req, res, next) => {
    console.log("Connected");
});
//app.uses
app.use(express.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
app.use("/", loginRoutes);
app.use("/business", userRoutes);
app.engine('ejs', ejsMate);
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views')); //setting up the views directory   
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public'))); //public directory to serve static content
app.use(session(sessionConfig));
app.use(passport.initialize());
app.use(passport.session());
passport.use(new localStrategy(User.authenticate()));
passport.serializeUser(User.serializeUser()); 
passport.deserializeUser(User.deserializeUser());

Also , the route for login

const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();
const users = require('../controllers/users');
const passport = require('passport');

router.route('/login')
    .get(users.renderLoginForm)
    .post(passport.authenticate('local', { successRedirect: '/', failureRedirect: '/login' }), users.login);

router.route('/register')
    .get(users.renderRegisterForm)
    .post(users.createNewUser);

module.exports = router;

The login method in users route has a simple console.log for now but I just can’t reach there.

What I have tried:

I can verify that the user credentials is registered and the correct username, password has been supplied.

When console.logging the

passport.serializeUser(User.serializeUser()); 

. I cannot find any problem