Laravel 5.2 Authentication

Introduction

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.

At its core, Laravel's authentication facilities are made up of "guards" and "providers". Guards define how users are authenticated for each request. For example, Laravel ships with a session guard which maintains state using session storage and cookies and a token guard, which authenticates users using a "API token" that is passed with each request.

Providers define how users are retrieved from your persistent storage. Laravel ships with support for retrieving users using Eloquent and the database query builder. However, you are free to define additional providers as needed for your application.

Don't worry if this all sounds confusing now! Most applications will never need to modify the default authentication configuration.

Database Considerations

By default, Laravel includes an App\User Eloquent model in your app directory. This model may be used with the default Eloquent authentication driver. If your application is not using Eloquent, you may use the database authentication driver which uses the Laravel query builder.

When building the database schema for the App\User model, make sure the password column is at least 60 characters in length, the default of 255 would be a good choice.

Also, you should verify 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.

Authentication Quickstart

Laravel ships with two authentication controllers out of the box, which 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.

Routing

Laravel provides a quick way to scaffold all of the routes and views you need for authentication using one simple command:

php artisan make:auth

This command should be used on fresh applications and will install registration and login views, as well as routes for all authentication end-points. A HomeController will also be generated, which serves post-login requests to your application's dashboard. However, you are free to customize or even remove this controller based on the needs of your application.

Views

As mentioned in the previous section, the php artisan make:auth command will create all of the views you need for authentication and place them in the resources/views/auth directory.

The make:auth command will also create a resources/views/layouts directory containing a base layout for your application. All of these views use the Bootstrap CSS framework, but you are free to customize them however you wish.

Authenticating

Now that you have routes and views setup for the included authentication controllers, you are ready to register and authenticate new users for your application! You may simply access your application in a browser. The authentication controllers already contain the logic (via their traits) to authenticate existing users and store new users in the database.

Path Customization

When a user is successfully authenticated, they will be redirected to the / URI. You can customize the post-authentication redirect location by defining a redirectTo property on the AuthController:

protected $redirectTo = '/home';

When a user is not successfully authenticated, they will be redirected back to the login form location automatically.

Guard Customization

You may also customize the "guard" that is used to authenticate users. To get started, define a guard property on your AuthController. The value of this property should correspond with one of the guards configured in your auth.php configuration file:

protected $guard = 'admin';

Validation / Storage Customization

To modify the form fields that are required when a new user registers with your application, or to customize how new user records are inserted into your database, 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 App\User records in your database using the Eloquent ORM. You are free to modify this method according to the needs of your database.

Retrieving The Authenticated User

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. Remember, type-hinted classes will automatically be injected into your controller methods:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class ProfileController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Update the user's profile.
     *
     * @param  Request  $request
     * @return Response
     */
    public function updateProfile(Request $request)
    {
        if ($request->user()) {
            // $request->user() returns an instance of the authenticated user...
        }
    }
}

Determining If The Current User Is Authenticated

To determine if the user is already logged into your application, you may use the check method on the Auth facade, which will return true if the user is authenticated:

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.

Protecting Routes

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 the middleware 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'
]);

Of course, if you are using controller classes, you may call the middleware method from the controller's constructor instead of attaching it in the route definition directly:

public function __construct()
{
    $this->middleware('auth');
}

Specifying A Guard

When attaching the auth middleware to a route, you may also specify which guard should be used to perform the authentication:

Route::get('profile', [
    'middleware' => 'auth:api',
    'uses' => 'ProfileController@show'
]);

The guard specified should correspond to one of the keys in the guards array of your auth.php configuration file.

Authentication Throttling

If you are using Laravel's built-in AuthController class, the Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\ThrottlesLogins trait may be used to throttle login attempts to your application. By default, the user will not be able to login for one minute if they fail to provide the correct credentials after several attempts. The throttling is unique to the user's username / e-mail address and their IP address:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers\Auth;

use App\User;
use Validator;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\ThrottlesLogins;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\AuthenticatesAndRegistersUsers;

class AuthController extends Controller
{
    use AuthenticatesAndRegistersUsers, ThrottlesLogins;

    // Rest of AuthController class...
}

Manually Authenticating Users

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!

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. Next, let's check out the attempt method:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Auth;

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.

The intended method on the redirector 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.

Specifying Additional Conditions

If you wish, you also may add extra conditions to the authentication query in addition to the user's e-mail and password. For example, we may verify that user is marked as "active":

if (Auth::attempt(['email' => $email, 'password' => $password, 'active' => 1])) {
    // The user is active, not suspended, and exists.
}

Note: In these examples, email is not a required option, it is merely used as an example. You should use whatever column name corresponds to a "username" in your database.

Accessing Specific Guard Instances

You may specify which guard instance you would like to utilize using the guard method on the Auth facade. This allows you to manage authentication for separate parts of your application using entirely separate authenticatable models or user tables.

The guard name passed to the guard method should correspond to one of the guards configured in your auth.php configuration file:

if (Auth::guard('admin')->attempt($credentials)) {
    //
}

Logging Out

To log users out of your application, you may use the logout method on the Auth facade. This will clear the authentication information in the user's session:

Auth::logout();

Remembering Users

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()) {
    //
}

Other Authentication Methods

Authenticate A User Instance

If you need to log an existing user instance into your application, you may call the login method with the user instance. The given object must be an implementation of the Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Authenticatable contract. Of course, the App\User model included with Laravel already implements this interface:

Auth::login($user);

// Login and "remember" the given user...
Auth::login($user, true);

Of course, you may specify the guard instance you would like to use:

Auth::guard('admin')->login($user);

Authenticate A User By ID

To log a user into the application by their ID, you may use the loginUsingId method. This method simply accepts the primary key of the user you wish to authenticate:

Auth::loginUsingId(1);

// Login and "remember" the given user...
Auth::loginUsingId(1, true);

Authenticate A User Once

You may use the once method to log a user into the application for a single request. No sessions or cookies will be utilized, which may be helpful when building a stateless API. The once method has the same signature as the attempt method:

if (Auth::once($credentials)) {
    //
}

HTTP Basic Authentication

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. The auth.basic middleware is included with the Laravel framework, so you do not need to define it:

Route::get('profile', ['middleware' => 'auth.basic', function() {
    // Only authenticated users may enter...
}]);

Once the middleware has been attached to the route, you will automatically be prompted for credentials when accessing the route in your browser. By default, the auth.basic middleware will use the email column on the user record as the "username".

A Note On FastCGI

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}]

Stateless HTTP Basic Authentication

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. If no response is returned by the onceBasic method, the request may be passed further into the application:

<?php

namespace Illuminate\Auth\Middleware;

use Auth;
use Closure;

class AuthenticateOnceWithBasicAuth
{
    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @param  \Closure  $next
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        return Auth::onceBasic() ?: $next($request);
    }

}

Next, register the route middleware and attach it to a route:

Route::get('api/user', ['middleware' => 'auth.basic.once', function() {
    // Only authenticated users may enter...
}]);

Resetting Passwords

Database Considerations

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 App\User model implements the Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\CanResetPassword contract. Of course, the App\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.

Generating The Reset Token Table Migration

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

Routing

Laravel includes an Auth\PasswordController that contains the logic necessary to reset user passwords. All of the routes needed to perform password resets may be generated using the make:auth Artisan command:

php artisan make:auth

Views

Again, Laravel will generate all of the necessary views for password reset when the make:auth command is executed. These views are placed in resources/views/auth/passwords. You are free to customize them as needed for your application.

After Resetting Passwords

Once you have defined the routes and views to reset your user's passwords, you may simply access the route in your browser at /password/reset. The PasswordController included with the framework already includes the logic to send the password reset link e-mails as well as update passwords in the database.

After the password is reset, the user will automatically be logged into the application and redirected to /home. You can customize the post password 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 password reset expire option in your config/auth.php file.

Customization

Authentication Guard Customization

In your auth.php configuration file, you may configure multiple "guards", which may be used to define authentication behavior for multiple user tables. You can customize the included PasswordController to use the guard of your choice by adding a $guard property to the controller:

/**
 * The authentication guard that should be used.
 *
 * @var string
 */
protected $guard = 'admins';

Password Broker Customization

In your auth.php configuration file, you may configure multiple password "brokers", which may be used to reset passwords on multiple user tables. You can customize the included PasswordController to use the broker of your choice by adding a $broker property to the controller:

/**
 * The password broker that should be used.
 *
 * @var string
 */
protected $broker = 'admins';

Adding Custom Guards

You may define your own authentication guards using the extend method on the Auth facade. You should place this call to provider within a service provider:

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use Auth;
use App\Services\Auth\JwtGuard;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

class AuthServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    /**
     * Perform post-registration booting of services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function boot()
    {
        Auth::extend('jwt', function($app, $name, array $config) {
            // Return an instance of Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Guard...

            return new JwtGuard(Auth::createUserProvider($config['provider']));
        });
    }

    /**
     * Register bindings in the container.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function register()
    {
        //
    }
}

As you can see in the example above, the callback passed to the extend method should return an implementation of Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Guard. This interface contains a few methods you will need to implement to define a custom guard.

Once your custom guard has been defined, you may use the guard in your guards configuration:

'guards' => [
    'api' => [
        'driver' => 'jwt',
        'provider' => 'users',
    ],
],

Adding Custom User Providers

If you are not using a traditional relational database to store your users, you will need to extend Laravel with your own authentication user provider. We will use the provider method on the Auth facade to define a custom user provider. You should place this call to provider 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::provider('riak', function($app, array $config) {
            // Return an instance of Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\UserProvider...
            return new RiakUserProvider($app['riak.connection']);
        });
    }

    /**
     * Register bindings in the container.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function register()
    {
        //
    }
}

After you have registered the provider with the provider method, you may switch to the new user provider in your config/auth.php configuration file. First, define a provider that uses your new driver:

'providers' => [
    'users' => [
        'driver' => 'riak',
    ],
],

Then, you may use this provider in your guards configuration:

'guards' => [
    'web' => [
        'driver' => 'session',
        'provider' => 'users',
    ],
],

The User Provider Contract

The Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\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 Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\UserProvider contract:

<?php

namespace Illuminate\Contracts\Auth;

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 a successful "remember me" login attempt, or a null when the 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 a boolean.

The Authenticatable Contract

Now that we have explored each of the methods on the UserProvider, let's take a look at the Authenticatable contract. Remember, the provider should return implementations of this interface from the retrieveById and retrieveByCredentials methods:

<?php

namespace Illuminate\Contracts\Auth;

interface Authenticatable {

    public function getAuthIdentifierName();
    public function getAuthIdentifier();
    public function getAuthPassword();
    public function getRememberToken();
    public function setRememberToken($value);
    public function getRememberTokenName();

}

This interface is simple. The getAuthIdentifierName method should return the name of the "primary key" field of the user and 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.

Events

Laravel raises a variety of events during the authentication process. You may attach listeners to these events in your EventServiceProvider:

/**
 * The event listener mappings for the application.
 *
 * @var array
 */
protected $listen = [
    'Illuminate\Auth\Events\Attempting' => [
        'App\Listeners\LogAuthenticationAttempt',
    ],

    'Illuminate\Auth\Events\Login' => [
        'App\Listeners\LogSuccessfulLogin',
    ],

    'Illuminate\Auth\Events\Logout' => [
        'App\Listeners\LogSuccessfulLogout',
    ],

    'Illuminate\Auth\Events\Lockout' => [
        'App\Listeners\LogLockout',
    ],
];