- Introduction
- Included Authentication Controllers
- Manually Authenticating Users
- Retrieving The Authenticated User
- Protecting Routes
- HTTP Basic Authentication
- Password Reminders & Reset
- Social Authentication
- Adding Custom Authentication Drivers
Laravel makes implementing authentication very simple. In fact, almost everything is configured for you out of the box. The authentication configuration file is located at config/auth.php, which contains several well documented options for tweaking the behavior of the authentication services.
By default, Laravel includes an App\User Eloquent model in your app directory. This model may be used with the default Eloquent authentication driver.
When building the database schema for this model, make the password column at least 60 characters.
Also, before getting started, make sure that your users (or equivalent) table contains a nullable, string remember_token column of 100 characters. This column will be used to store a token for "remember me" sessions being maintained by your application. This can be done by using $table->rememberToken(); in a migration. The scaffold:auth command will generate these migrations for you.
Note: If your application is not using Eloquent, you may use the
databaseauthentication driver which uses the Laravel query builder.
Laravel ships with two authentication controllers out of the box. These controllers are located in the App\Http\Controllers\Auth namespace. The AuthController handles new user registration and authentication, while the PasswordController contains the logic to help existing users reset their forgotten passwords.
Each of these controllers uses a trait to include their necessary methods. For many applications, you will not need to modify these controllers at all.
However, you will need to provide views that these controllers can render. The views should be placed in resources/views/auth directory. You are free to customize these views however you wish. The login view should be placed at resources/auth/login.blade.php, and the registration view should be placed at resources/auth/register.blade.php.
<!-- resources/auth/login.blade.php -->
<form method="POST" action="/auth/login">
{{ csrf_field() }}
<div>
Email
<input type="email" name="email" value="{{ old('email') }}">
</div>
<div>
Password
<input type="password" name="password" id="password">
</div>
<div>
<input type="checkbox" name="remember"> Remember Me
</div>
<div>
<button type="submit">Login</button>
</div>
</form>
<!-- resources/auth/register.blade.php -->
<form method="POST" action="/auth/register">
{{ csrf_field() }}
<div class="col-md-6">
Name
<input type="text" name="name" value="{{ old('name') }}">
</div>
<div>
Email
<input type="email" name="email" value="{{ old('email') }}">
</div>
<div>
Password
<input type="password" name="password">
</div>
<div class="col-md-6">
Confirm Password
<input type="password" name="password_confirmation">
</div>
<div>
<button type="submit">Register</button>
</div>
</form>
If a user is successfully authenticated, they will be redirected to the /home URI. You will need to register a route to handle this URI.
You can customize the post-authentication redirect location by defining a redirectTo property on the AuthController:
protected $redirectTo = '/dashboard';
To modify the form fields that are required when a new user registers with your application, you may modify the AuthController class. This class is responsible for validating and creating new users of your application.
The validator method of the AuthController contains the validation rules for new users of the application. You are free to modify this method as you wish.
The create method of the AuthController is responsible for creating new User records in your database. You are free to modify this method according to the needs of your database.
Of course, you are not required to use the authentication controllers included with Laravel. If you choose to remove these controllers, you will need to manage user authentication using the Laravel authentication classes directly. Don't worry, it's a cinch! First, let's check out the attempt method.
We will access Laravel's authentication services via the Auth facade, so we'll need to make sure to import the Auth facade at the top of the class.
<?php namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Auth;
use Illuminate\Routing\Controller;
class AuthController extends Controller
{
/**
* Handle an authentication attempt.
*
* @return Response
*/
public function authenticate()
{
if (Auth::attempt(['email' => $email, 'password' => $password])) {
// Authentication passed...
return redirect()->intended('dashboard');
}
}
}
The attempt method accepts an array of key / value pairs as its first argument. The values in the array will be used to find the user in your database table. So, in the example above, the user will be retrieved by the value of the email column. If the user is found, the hashed password stored in the database will be compared with the hashed password value passed to the method via the array. If the two hashed passwords match an authenticated session will be started for the user.
The attempt method will return true if authentication was successful. Otherwise, false will be returned.
Note: In this example,
The intended redirect function will redirect the user to the URL they were attempting to access before being caught by the authentication filter. A fallback URI may be given to this method in case the intended destination is not available.
You also may add extra conditions to the authentication query:
if (Auth::attempt(['email' => $email, 'password' => $password, 'active' => 1])) {
// The user is active, not suspended, and exists.
}
To determine if the user is already logged into your application, you may use the check method:
if (Auth::check()) {
// The user is logged in...
}
However, you may use middleware to verify that the user is authenticated before allowing the user access to certain routes / controllers. To learn more about this, check out the documentation on protecting routes.
If you would like to provide "remember me" functionality in your application, you may pass a boolean value as the second argument to the attempt method, which will keep the user authenticated indefinitely, or until they manually logout. Of course, your users table must include the string remember_token column, which will be used to store the "remember me" token.
if (Auth::attempt(['email' => $email, 'password' => $password], $remember)) {
// The user is being remembered...
}
If you are "remembering" users, you may use the viaRemember method to determine if the user was authenticated using the "remember me" cookie:
if (Auth::viaRemember()) {
//
}
To log a user into the application by their ID, use the loginUsingId method:
Auth::loginUsingId(1);
The validate method allows you to validate a user's credentials without actually logging them into the application:
if (Auth::validate($credentials)) {
//
}
You may also use the once method to log a user into the application for a single request. No sessions or cookies will be utilized:
if (Auth::once($credentials)) {
//
}
The once method is primarily useful for building stateless APIs.
If you need to log an existing user instance into your application, you may call the login method with the user instance:
Auth::login($user);
This is equivalent to logging in a user via credentials using the attempt method.
Auth::logout();
You may access the authenticated user via the Auth facade:
$user = Auth::user();
Alternatively, once a user is authenticated, you may access the authenticated user via an Illuminate\Http\Request instance:
<?php namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Routing\Controller;
class ProfileController extends Controller
{
/**
* Update the user's profile.
*
* @return Response
*/
public function updateProfile(Request $request)
{
if ($request->user()) {
// $request->user() returns an instance of the authenticated user...
}
}
}
Route middleware can be used to allow only authenticated users to access a given route. Laravel ships with the auth middleware, which is defined in app\Http\Middleware\Authenticate.php. All you need to do is attach it to a route definition:
// Using A Route Closure...
Route::get('profile', ['middleware' => 'auth', function() {
// Only authenticated users may enter...
}]);
// Using A Controller...
Route::get('profile', [
'middleware' => 'auth',
'uses' => 'ProfileController@show'
]);
HTTP Basic Authentication provides a quick way to authenticate users of your application without setting up a dedicated "login" page. To get started, attach the auth.basic middleware to your route:
Route::get('profile', ['middleware' => 'auth.basic', function() {
// Only authenticated users may enter...
}]);
By default, the auth.basic middleware will use the email column on the user record as the "username".
You may also use HTTP Basic Authentication without setting a user identifier cookie in the session, which is particularly useful for API authentication. To do so, define a middleware that calls the onceBasic method:
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
return Auth::onceBasic() ?: $next($request);
}
Next, just register the middleware and attach it to a route.
If you are using PHP FastCGI, HTTP Basic authentication may not work correctly out of the box. The following lines should be added to your .htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} ^(.+)$
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
Most web applications provide a way for users to reset their forgotten passwords. Rather than forcing you to re-implement this on each application, Laravel provides convenient methods for sending password reminders and performing password resets.
To get started, verify that your User model implements the Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\CanResetPassword contract. Of course, the User model included with the framework already implements this interface, and uses the Illuminate\Auth\Passwords\CanResetPassword trait to include the methods needed to implement the interface.
Next, a table must be created to store the password reset tokens. The migration for this table is included with Laravel out of the box, and resides in the database/migrations directory. So all you need to do is migrate:
php artisan migrate
Laravel includes an Auth\PasswordController that contains the logic necessary to reset user passwords.
You will simply need to provide an HTML view for the password reset request form. This view should be placed at resources/views/auth/password.blade.php Here is a sample form to get you started:
<!-- resources/views/auth/password.blade.php -->
<form method="POST" action="/password/email">
{{ csrf_field() }}
<div>
Email
<input type="email" name="email" value="{{ old('email') }}">
</div>
<div>
<button type="submit">
Send Password Reset Link
</button>
</div>
</form>
When a user submits a request to reset their password, they will receive an e-mail with a link that points to the getReset method of the PasswordController. You will need to create a view for this e-mail at resources/views/emails/password.blade.php. The view will receive the $token variable which contains the password reset token to match the user to the password reset request. Here is an example view to get you started:
Click here to reset your password: {{ url('password/reset/'.$token) }}
When the user clicks the e-mailed link to reset their password, they will be presented with a password reset form. This view should be placed at resources/views/auth/reset.blade.php.
Here is a sample password reset form to get you started:
<!-- resources/views/auth/reset.blade.php -->
<form method="POST" action="/password/reset">
{{ csrf_field() }}
<input type="hidden" name="token" value="{{ $token }}">
<div>
<input type="email" name="email" value="{{ old('email') }}">
</div>
<div>
<input type="password" name="password">
</div>
<div>
<input type="password" name="password_confirmation">
</div>
<div>
<button type="submit">
Reset Password
</button>
</div>
</form>
After the password is reset, the user will automatically be logged into the application and redirected to /home. You can customize the post-reset redirect location by defining a redirectTo property on the PasswordController:
protected $redirectTo = '/dashboard';
Note: By default, password reset tokens expire after one hour. You may change this via the
reminder.expireoption in yourconfig/auth.phpfile.
In addition to typical, form based authentication, Laravel also provides a simple, convenient way to authenticate with OAuth providers using Laravel Socialite. Socialite currently supports authentication with Facebook, Twitter, Google, GitHub and Bitbucket.
To get started with Socialite, include the package in your composer.json file:
"laravel/socialite": "~2.0"
Next, register the Laravel\Socialite\SocialiteServiceProvider in your config/app.php configuration file. Also, add the Socialite facade to the aliases array in your app configuration file:
'Socialite' => 'Laravel\Socialite\Facades\Socialite',
You will need to add credentials for the OAuth services your application utilizes. These credentials should be placed in your config/services.php configuration file, and should use the key facebook, twitter, google, or github, depending on the providers your application requires. For example:
'github' => [
'client_id' => 'your-github-app-id',
'client_secret' => 'your-github-app-secret',
'redirect' => 'http:https://your-callback-url',
],
Next, you are ready to authenticate users! You will need two routes: one for redirecting the user to the OAuth provider, and another for receiving the callback from the provider after authentication. We will access Socialite using the Socialite facade:
<?php namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Routing\Controller;
class AuthController extends Controller
{
/**
* Redirect the user to the GitHub authentication page.
*
* @return Response
*/
public function redirectToProvider()
{
return Socialite::driver('github')->redirect();
}
/**
* Obtain the user information from GitHub.
*
* @return Response
*/
public function handleProviderCallback()
{
$user = Socialite::driver('github')->user();
// $user->token;
}
}
The redirect method takes care of sending the user to the OAuth provider, while the user method will read the incoming request and retrieve the user's information from the provider. Before redirecting the user, you may also set "scopes" on the request:
return Socialite::driver('github')
->scopes(['scope1', 'scope2'])->redirect();
Once you have a user instance, you can grab a few more details about the user:
$user = $this->socialite->driver('github')->user();
// OAuth Two Providers
$token = $user->token;
// OAuth One Providers
$token = $user->token;
$tokenSecret = $user->tokenSecret;
// All Providers
$user->getId();
$user->getNickname();
$user->getName();
$user->getEmail();
$user->getAvatar();
Authentication may be extended the same way as the cache and session facilities. Again, we will use the extend method used to extend other parts of the framework. You should place this call to extend within a service provider:
<?php namespace App\Providers;
use Auth;
use App\Extensions\RiakUserProvider;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
class AuthServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
Auth::extend('riak', function($app) {
// Return an instance of Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\UserProvider...
return new RiakUserProvider($app['riak.connection']);
});
}
/**
* Register bindings in the container.
*
* @return void
*/
public function register()
{
//
}
}
The UserProvider implementations are only responsible for fetching a Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Authenticatable implementation out of a persistent storage system, such as MySQL, Riak, etc. These two interfaces allow the Laravel authentication mechanisms to continue functioning regardless of how the user data is stored or what type of class is used to represent it.
Let's take a look at the UserProvider contract:
interface UserProvider {
public function retrieveById($identifier);
public function retrieveByToken($identifier, $token);
public function updateRememberToken(Authenticatable $user, $token);
public function retrieveByCredentials(array $credentials);
public function validateCredentials(Authenticatable $user, array $credentials);
}
The retrieveById function typically receives a key representing the user, such as an auto-incrementing ID from a MySQL database. The Authenticatable implementation matching the ID should be retrieved and returned by the method.
The retrieveByToken function retrieves a user by their unique $identifier and "remember me" $token, stored in a field remember_token. As with the previous method, the Authenticatable implementation should be returned.
The updateRememberToken method updates the $user field remember_token with the new $token. The new token can be either a fresh token, assigned on successful "remember me" login attempt, or a null when user is logged out.
The retrieveByCredentials method receives the array of credentials passed to the Auth::attempt method when attempting to sign into an application. The method should then "query" the underlying persistent storage for the user matching those credentials. Typically, this method will run a query with a "where" condition on $credentials['username']. The method should then return an implementation of UserInterface. This method should not attempt to do any password validation or authentication.
The validateCredentials method should compare the given $user with the $credentials to authenticate the user. For example, this method might compare the $user->getAuthPassword() string to a Hash::make of $credentials['password']. This method should only validate the user's credentials and return boolean.
Now that we have explored each of the methods on the UserProvider, let's take a look at the Authenticatable. Remember, the provider should return implementations of this interface from the retrieveById and retrieveByCredentials methods:
interface Authenticatable {
public function getAuthIdentifier();
public function getAuthPassword();
public function getRememberToken();
public function setRememberToken($value);
public function getRememberTokenName();
}
This interface is simple. The getAuthIdentifier method should return the "primary key" of the user. In a MySQL back-end, again, this would be the auto-incrementing primary key. The getAuthPassword should return the user's hashed password. This interface allows the authentication system to work with any User class, regardless of what ORM or storage abstraction layer you are using. By default, Laravel includes a User class in the app directory which implements this interface, so you may consult this class for an implementation example.
Finally, once we have implemented the UserProvider, we are ready to register our extension with the Auth facade:
Auth::extend('riak', function($app) {
return new RiakUserProvider($app['riak.connection']);
});
After you have registered the driver with the extend method, you may switch to the new driver in your config/auth.php configuration file.