Laravel 4 Auth token

Hooks into the laravel auth module and provides an auth token upon success. This token is really only secure in https environment. This main purpose for this module was to provide an auth token to javascript web app which could be used to identify users on api calls.

Upgrading to Laravel 4.1?, see the breaking changes

Getting Started

Setup

Add the package to your composer.json

"require": {
	...
    "tappleby/laravel-auth-token": "0.3.*"
}

Add the service provider to app/config/app.php

'Tappleby\AuthToken\AuthTokenServiceProvider',

Setup the optional aliases in app/config/app.php

'AuthToken' => 'Tappleby\Support\Facades\AuthToken',
'AuthTokenNotAuthorizedException' => 'Tappleby\AuthToken\Exceptions\NotAuthorizedException'

Currently the auth tokens are stored in the database, you will need to run the migrations:

php artisan migrate --package=tappleby/laravel-auth-token

Optional configuration

This package defaults to using email as the username field to validate against, this can be changed via the package configuration.

1. Publish the configuration php artisan config:publish tappleby/laravel-auth-token
2. Edit the format_credentials closure in app/config/packages/tappleby/laravel-auth-token/config.php

Example - Only validate active users and check the username column instead of email:

'format_credentials' => function ($username, $password) {
	return array(
		'username' => $username,
		'password' => $password,
		'active' => true
	);
}

You can read more about the laravel Auth module here: Authenticating Users

The controller

A default controller is provided to grant, check and revoke tokens. Add the following to app/routes.php

Route::get('auth', 'Tappleby\AuthToken\AuthTokenController@index');
Route::post('auth', 'Tappleby\AuthToken\AuthTokenController@store');
Route::delete('auth', 'Tappleby\AuthToken\AuthTokenController@destroy');

CORS Support

CORS support is not built into this library by default, it can be enabled by using the following package: barryvdh/laravel-cors.

The configuration will be specific to how your routing is setup. If you are using the X-Auth-Token header, it is important to add this to the allowedHeaders configuration. See the package documentation for further configuration details.

Heres an example using the default auth route:

'paths' => array(
    'auth' => array(
        'allowedOrigins' => array('*'),
        'allowedHeaders' => array('Content-Type', 'X-Auth-Token'),
        'allowedMethods' => array('POST', 'PUT', 'GET', 'DELETE'),
        'maxAge' => 3600,
    )
),

Note: If you know the list of allowedOrigins it might be best to define them explicitly instead of using the wildcard *

Request parameters

All request must include one of:

1. X-Auth-Token header.
2. auth_token field.

GET Index action

Returns current user as json. Requires auth token parameter to be present. On Fail throws NotAuthorizedException.

POST Store action

Required input username and password. On success returns json object containing token and user. On Fail throws NotAuthorizedException.

DELETE Destroy action

Purges the users tokens. Requires auth token parameter to be present. On Fail throws NotAuthorizedException.

NotAuthorizedException has a 401 error code by default.

Route Filter

An auth.token route filter gets registered by the service provider. To protect a resource just register a before filter. Filter will throw an NotAuthorizedException if a valid auth token is invalid or missing.

Route::group(array('prefix' => 'api', 'before' => 'auth.token'), function() {
  Route::get('/', function() {
    return "Protected resource";
  });
});	 

Events

The route filter will trigger auth.token.valid with the authorized user when a valid auth token is provided.

Event::listen('auth.token.valid', function($user)
{
  //Token is valid, set the user on auth system.
  Auth::setUser($user);
});

AuthTokenController::store will trigger auth.token.created before returning the response.

Event::listen('auth.token.created', function($user, $token)
{
	$user->load('relation1', 'relation2');
});

AuthTokenController::destroy will trigger auth.token.deleted before returning the response.

Handling the NotAuthorizedException

Optionally register the NotAuthorizedException as alias eg. AuthTokenNotAuthorizedException

App::error(function(AuthTokenNotAuthorizedException $exception) {
  if(Request::ajax()) {
    return Response::json(array('error' => $exception->getMessage()), $exception->getCode());
  }
  
  …Handle non ajax response…
});

Combining Laravel Auth with AuthToken

Some apps might already be using the traditional laravel based auth. The following can be used to manually generate a token.

if(Auth::check()) {
  $authToken = AuthToken::create(Auth::user());
  $publicToken = AuthToken::publicToken($authToken);
}

The AuthToken::publicToken method prepares the auth token to be sent to the browser.

Changes

0.3.0

• Added auth.token.created event which gets triggered before response is returned in AuthTokenController::store
• AuthTokenController requires the event dispatcher to be passed to constructor.

0.2.0

• Adds support for Laravel 4.1.X. This is a hard dependency due to API changes in L4.1
• Removed the facade for AuthTokenController, must use the full namespace to controller. see The controller section
• Optional configuration for Auth::attempt fields.

Pro tip: Using with jQuery

Using the jQuery ajaxPrefilter method the X-Auth-Token can be set automatically on ajax request.

// Register ajax prefilter. If app config contains auth_token will automatically set header,
$.ajaxPrefilter(function (options, originalOptions, jqXHR) {
  if (config.auth_token) {
    jqXHR.setRequestHeader('X-Auth-Token', config.auth_token);
  }
});

If a 401 response code is recieved it can also handled automatically. In the following example I opted to redirect to logout page to ensure user session was destroyed.

// If a 401 http error is recieved, automatically redirect to logout page.
$(document).ajaxError(function (event, jqxhr) {
  if (jqxhr && jqxhr.status === 401) {
    window.location = '/logout';
  }
});

Pro tip: Automatically binding token data to view.

View composer can be used to automatically bind data to views. This keeps logic all in one spot. I use the following to setup config variables for javascript.

View::composer('layouts.default', function($view)
{
  $rootUrl = rtrim(URL::route('home'), '/');

  $jsConfig = isset($view->jsConfig) ? $view->jsConfig : array();

  $jsConfig = array_merge(array(
    'rootUrl' =>  $rootUrl
  ), $jsConfig);

  if(Auth::check()) {

    $authToken = AuthToken::create(Auth::user());
    $publicToken = AuthToken::publicToken($authToken);

    $userData = array_merge(
      Auth::user()->toArray(),
      array('auth_token' => $publicToken)
    );

    $jsConfig['userData'] = $userData;
  }

  $view->with('jsConfig', $jsConfig);
});