Laravel 5.1 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.

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.

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

By default, no routes are included to point requests to the authentication controllers. You may manually add them to your app/Http/routes.php file:

// Authentication routes...
Route::get('auth/login', 'Auth\AuthController@getLogin');
Route::post('auth/login', 'Auth\AuthController@postLogin');
Route::get('auth/logout', 'Auth\AuthController@getLogout');

// Registration routes...
Route::get('auth/register', 'Auth\AuthController@getRegister');
Route::post('auth/register', 'Auth\AuthController@postRegister');

Views

Though the authentication controllers are included with the framework, you will need to provide views that these controllers can render. The views should be placed in the resources/views/auth directory. You are free to customize these views however you wish. The login view should be placed at resources/views/auth/login.blade.php, and the registration view should be placed at resources/views/auth/register.blade.php.

Sample Authentication Form

<!-- resources/views/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>

Sample Registration Form

<!-- resources/views/auth/register.blade.php -->

<form method="POST" action="/auth/register">
    {!! csrf_field() !!}

    <div>
        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>
        Confirm Password
        <input type="password" name="password_confirmation">
    </div>

    <div>
        <button type="submit">Register</button>
    </div>
</form>

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 defined routes in a browser. The authentication controllers already contain the logic (via their traits) to authenticate existing users and store new users in the database.

When a user is successfully authenticated, they will be redirected to the /home URI, which you will need to register a route to handle. You can customize the post-authentication redirect location by defining a redirectPath property on the AuthController:

protected $redirectPath = '/dashboard';

When a user is not successfully authenticated, they will be redirected to the /auth/login URI. You can customize the failed post-authentication redirect location by defining a loginPath property on the AuthController:

protected $loginPath = '/login';

The loginPath will not change where a user is bounced if they try to access a protected route. That is controlled by the App\Http\Middleware\Authenticate middleware's handle method.

Customizations

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:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Routing\Controller;

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');
}

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;
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.

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.

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.
}

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();

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.

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);

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);

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. However, you will need to define routes to point requests to this controller:

// Password reset link request routes...
Route::get('password/email', 'Auth\PasswordController@getEmail');
Route::post('password/email', 'Auth\PasswordController@postEmail');

// Password reset routes...
Route::get('password/reset/{token}', 'Auth\PasswordController@getReset');
Route::post('password/reset', 'Auth\PasswordController@postReset');

Views

In addition to defining the routes for the PasswordController, you will need to provide views that can be returned by this controller. Don't worry, we will provide sample views to help you get started. Of course, you are free to style your forms however you wish.

Sample Password Reset Link Request Form

You will need to provide an HTML view for the password reset request form. This view should be placed at resources/views/auth/password.blade.php. This form provides a single field for the user's e-mail address, allowing them to request a password reset link:

<!-- resources/views/auth/password.blade.php -->

<form method="POST" action="/password/email">
    {!! csrf_field() !!}

    @if (count($errors) > 0)
        <ul>
            @foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
                <li>{{ $error }}</li>
            @endforeach
        </ul>
    @endif

    <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 (typically routed at /password/reset) 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 e-mail view to get you started:

<!-- resources/views/emails/password.blade.php -->

Click here to reset your password: {{ url('password/reset/'.$token) }}

Sample Password Reset Form

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 }}">

    @if (count($errors) > 0)
        <ul>
            @foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
                <li>{{ $error }}</li>
            @endforeach
        </ul>
    @endif

    <div>
        Email
        <input type="email" name="email" value="{{ old('email') }}">
    </div>

    <div>
        Password
        <input type="password" name="password">
    </div>

    <div>
        Confirm Password
        <input type="password" name="password_confirmation">
    </div>

    <div>
        <button type="submit">
            Reset Password
        </button>
    </div>
</form>

After Resetting Passwords

Once you have defined the routes and views to reset your user's passwords, you may simply access the routes in your browser. 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 reminder.expire option in your config/auth.php file.

Social Authentication

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, LinkedIn, Google, GitHub and Bitbucket.

To get started with Socialite, add to your composer.json file as a dependency:

composer require laravel/socialite

Configuration

After installing the Socialite library, register the Laravel\Socialite\SocialiteServiceProvider in your config/app.php configuration file:

'providers' => [
    // Other service providers...

    Laravel\Socialite\SocialiteServiceProvider::class,
],

Also, add the Socialite facade to the aliases array in your app configuration file:

'Socialite' => Laravel\Socialite\Facades\Socialite::class,

You will also 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, linkedin, google, github or bitbucket, depending on the providers your application requires. For example:

'github' => [
    'client_id' => 'your-github-app-id',
    'client_secret' => 'your-github-app-secret',
    'redirect' => 'http://your-callback-url',
],

Basic Usage

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 Socialite;
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 using the scope method. This method will overwrite all existing scopes:

return Socialite::driver('github')
            ->scopes(['scope1', 'scope2'])->redirect();

Of course, you will need to define routes to your controller methods:

Route::get('auth/github', 'Auth\AuthController@redirectToProvider');
Route::get('auth/github/callback', 'Auth\AuthController@handleProviderCallback');

A number of OAuth providers support optional parameters in the redirect request. To include any optional parameters in the request, call the with method with an associative array:

return Socialite::driver('google')
            ->with(['hd' => 'example.com'])->redirect();

Retrieving User Details

Once you have a user instance, you can grab a few more details about the user:

$user = 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();

Adding Custom Authentication Drivers

If you are not using a traditional relational database to store your users, you will need to extend Laravel with your own authentication driver. We will use the extend method on the Auth facade to define a custom driver. 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()
    {
        //
    }
}

After you have registered the driver with the extend method, you may switch to the new driver in your config/auth.php configuration file.

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 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.

Events

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

/**
 * Register any other events for your application.
 *
 * @param  \Illuminate\Contracts\Events\Dispatcher  $events
 * @return void
 */
public function boot(DispatcherContract $events)
{
    parent::boot($events);

    // Fired on each authentication attempt...
    $events->listen('auth.attempt', function ($credentials, $remember, $login) {
        //
    });

    // Fired on successful logins...
    $events->listen('auth.login', function ($user, $remember) {
        //
    });

    // Fired on logouts...
    $events->listen('auth.logout', function ($user) {
        //
    });
}