• Configuration
• Storing Passwords
• Authenticating Users
• Manually Logging In Users
• Protecting Routes
• HTTP Basic Authentication
• Password Reminders & Reset
• Encryption

Laravel aims to make implementing authentication very simple. In fact, almost everything is configured for you out of the box. The authentication configuration file is located at app/config/auth.php, which contains several well documented options for tweaking the behavior of the authentication facilities.

By default, Laravel includes a User model in your app/models directory which may be used with the default Eloquent authentication driver. Please remember when building the Schema for this Model to ensure that the password field is a minimum of 60 characters.

If your application is not using Eloquent, you may use the database authentication driver which uses the Laravel query builder.

The Laravel Hash class provides secure Bcrypt hashing:

$password = Hash::make('secret');

if (Hash::check('secret', $hashedPassword))
{
	// The passwords match...
}

if (Hash::needsRehash($hashed))
{
	$hashed = Hash::make('secret');
}

To log a user into your application, you may use the Auth::attempt method.

if (Auth::attempt(array('email' => $email, 'password' => $password)))
{
	return Redirect::intended('dashboard');
}

Take note that email is not a required option, it is merely used for example. You should use whatever column name corresponds to a "username" in your database. The Redirect::intended function will redirect the user to the URL they were trying 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.

When the attempt method is called, the auth.attempt event will be fired. If the authentication attempt is successful and the user is logged in, the auth.login event will be fired as well.

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...
}

If you would like to provide "remember me" functionality in your application, you may pass true as the second argument to the attempt method, which will keep the user authenticated indefinitely (or until they manually logout):

if (Auth::attempt(array('email' => $email, 'password' => $password), true))
{
	// The user is being remembered...
}

Note: If the attempt method returns true, the user is considered logged into the application.

If you are "remembering" user logins, you may use the viaRemember method to determine if the user was authenticated using the "remember me" cookie:

if (Auth::viaRemember())
{
	//
}

You also may add extra conditions to the authenticating query:

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

Note: For added protection against session fixation, the user's session ID will automatically be regenerated after authenticating.

Once a user is authenticated, you may access the User model / record:

$email = Auth::user()->email;

To simply 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))
{
	//
}

Auth::logout();

If you need to log an existing user instance into your application, you may simply call the login method with the instance:

$user = User::find(1);

Auth::login($user);

This is equivalent to logging in a user via credentials using the attempt method.

Route filters may be used to allow only authenticated users to access a given route. Laravel provides the auth filter by default, and it is defined in app/filters.php.

Route::get('profile', array('before' => 'auth', function()
{
	// Only authenticated users may enter...
}));

Laravel provides an easy method of protecting your application from cross-site request forgeries.

<input type="hidden" name="_token" value="<?php echo csrf_token(); ?>">

Route::post('register', array('before' => 'csrf', function()
{
    return 'You gave a valid CSRF token!';
}));

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 filter to your route:

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

By default, the basic filter will use the email column on the user record when authenticating. If you wish to use another column you may pass the column name as the first parameter to the basic method:

return Auth::basic('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 filter that returns the onceBasic method:

Route::filter('basic.once', function()
{
	return Auth::onceBasic();
});

If you are using PHP FastCGI, HTTP Basic authentication will not work correctly by default. 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\Auth\Reminders\RemindableInterface contract. Of course, the User model included with the framework already implements this interface.

class User extends Eloquent implements RemindableInterface {

	public function getReminderEmail()
	{
		return $this->email;
	}

}

Next, a table must be created to store the password reset tokens. To generate a migration for this table, simply execute the auth:reminders-table Artisan command:

php artisan auth:reminders-table

php artisan migrate

Now we're ready to generate the password reminder controller. To automatically generate a controller, you may use the auth:reminders-controller Artisan command, which will create a RemindersController.php file in your app/controllers directory.

php artisan auth:reminders-controller

The generated controller will already have a getRemind method that handles showing your password reminder form. All you need to do is create a password.remind view. This view should have a basic form with an email field. The form should POST to the RemindersController@postRemind action.

A simple form on the password.remind view might look like this:

<form action="{{ action('RemindersController@postRemind') }}" method="POST">
	<input type="email" name="email">
	<input type="submit" value="Send Reminder">
</form>

In addition to getRemind, the generated controller will already have a postRemind method that handles sending the password reminder e-mails to your users. This method expects the email field to be present in the POST variables. If the reminder e-mail is successfully sent to the user, a status message will be flashed to the session. If the reminder fails, an error message will be flashed instead.

Within the postRemind controller method you may modify the message instance before it is sent to the user:

Password::remind(Input::only('email'), function($message)
{
	$message->subject('Password Reminder');
});

Your user will receive an e-mail with a link that points to the getReset method of the controller. The password reminder token, which is used to identify a given password reminder attempt, will also be passed to the controller method. The action is already configured to return a password.reset view which you should build. The token will be passed to the view, and you should place this token in a hidden form field named token. In addition to the token, your password reset form should contain email, password, and password_confirmation fields. The form should POST to the RemindersController@postReset method.

A simple form on the password.reset view might look like this:

<form action="{{ action('RemindersController@postReset') }}" method="POST">
	<input type="hidden" name="token" value="{{ $token }}">
	<input type="email" name="email">
	<input type="password" name="password">
	<input type="password" name="password_confirmation">
	<input type="submit" value="Reset Password">
</form>

Finally, the postReset method is responsible for actually changing the password in storage. In this controller action, the Closure passed to the Password::reset method sets the password attribute on the User and calls the save method. Of course, this Closure is assuming your User model is an Eloquent model; however, you are free to change this Closure as needed to be compatible with your application's database storage system.

If the password is successfully reset, the user will be redirected to the root of your application. Again, you are free to change this redirect URL. If the password reset fails, the user will be redirect back to the reset form, and an error message will be flashed to the session.

By default, the Password::reset method will verify that the passwords match and are >= six characters. You may customize these rules using the Password::validator method, which accepts a Closure. Within this Closure, you may do any password validation you wish. Note that you are not required to verify that the passwords match, as this will be done automatically by the framework.

Password::validator(function($credentials)
{
	return strlen($credentials['password']) >= 8;
});

Note: By default, password reset tokens expire after one hour. You may change this via the reminder.expire option of your app/config/auth.php file.

Laravel provides facilities for strong AES-256 encryption via the mcrypt PHP extension:

$encrypted = Crypt::encrypt('secret');

Note: Be sure to set a 32 character, random string in the key option of the app/config/app.php file. Otherwise, encrypted values will not be secure.

$decrypted = Crypt::decrypt($encryptedValue);

You may also set the cipher and mode used by the encrypter:

Crypt::setMode('ctr');

Crypt::setCipher($cipher);