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Authentication

Introduction

The Themosis framework implements an authentication workflow configured out of the box for you. The authentication configuration file is located at config/auth.php, which contains documented options for tweaking the behavior of the authentication services.

The authentication system is not attached to the WordPress one. It is a separate solution to help you build customers areas on your application, outside of the WordPress administration.

The implementation uses the illuminate/auth package as well as the framework form API in order to build its related forms and validate data. One difference here is that the main user class is a Customer class. We have kept the user class name for WordPress administration users elements.

The Illuminate authentication facilities are made up of "guards" and "providers". Guards define how customers are authenticated on each request. By default, it ships with a session guard which maintains state using session storage and cookies.

Providers define how customers are retrieved from your persistent storage. By default, it supports Eloquent and the database query builder. However you are free to define additional providers as needed for your application.

Quick setup

The framework provides commands to help you get started authenticate customers on your application. Follow the next steps to quickly scaffold the authentication system:

Initialize migration files

First create the customers migration file by running the customer:table command:

php console customer:table

If you also need the password reset mechanism for your application, run the password:table command as well:

php console password:table

Scaffold authentication files

Next, provides all authentication necessary files into your app directory by calling the make:auth command:

php console make:auth

The command will update your routes/web.php file and add the following routes:

Auth::routes();

Route::get('/settings', 'SettingsController@index')->name('settings');

If you have existing routes defined, make sure to move those statements on top of your file.

Migrate the database

Finally, run the migration by executing the migrate command like so:

php console migrate

The command will add the customers and password_resets tables in your database.

Authentication quickstart

The Themosis framework ships with several pre-built routes, views, forms and authentication controllers. After running the quick setup above, authentication controllers are installed under the App\Http\Controllers\Auth namespace, forms under the App\Forms\Auth namespace, routes are added to your routes/web.php file and views are installed in the application root resources/views/auth directory.

The ForgotPasswordController handles e-mailing links for resetting passwords, the LoginController handles authentication, the RegisterController handles new customer registration, the ResetPasswordController contains the logic to reset passwords and the VerificationController handles customer email confirmation if you specify the verify property on the Auth::routes() call like so:

Auth::routes(['verify' => true]);

If your application doesn't need registration, you may disable it by removing the newly created RegisterController and modifying the route declaration:

Auth::routes(['register' => false]);

Routing

The provided authentication system defines default end-points for your customers in order to register, login, access their dashboard, logout and reset their password. If you define an option to verify email, a route is provided as well to handle the workflow. Here are the defined routes from the Auth::routes() method call:

// URL: http://domain.com/auth/login
Route::get('auth/login', 'Auth\LoginController@showLoginForm')->name('login');
Route::post('auth/login', 'Auth\LoginController@login');
Route::post('auth/logout', 'Auth\LoginController@logout')->name('logout');

// URL: http://domain.com/auth/register
Route::get('auth/register', 'Auth\RegisterController@showRegistrationForm')->name('register');
Route::post('auth/register', 'Auth\RegisterController@register');

// URL: http://domain.com/password/reset
Route::get('password/reset', 'Auth\ForgotPasswordController@showLinkRequestForm')->name('password.request');
Route::post('password/email', 'Auth\ForgotPasswordController@sendResetLinkEmail')->name('password.email');

// URL: http://domain.com/password/reset/$token
Route::get('password/reset/{token}', 'Auth\ResetPasswordController@showResetForm')->name('password.reset');
Route::post('password/reset', 'Auth\ResetPasswordController@reset')->name('password.update');

// URL: http://domain.com/email/verify
Route::get('email/verify', 'Auth\VerificationController@show')->name('verification.notice');

// URL: http://domain.com/email/verify/$id
Route::get('email/verify/{id}', 'Auth\VerificationController@verify')->name('verification.verify');

// URL: http://domain.com/email/resend
Route::get('email/resend', 'Auth\VerificationController@resend')->name('verification.resend');

Once a customer is authenticated, the Themosis framework redirects to the /settings URI. A GET route is automatically added for you as well as a SettingsController inside the app/Http/Controllers directory:

Route::get('/settings', 'SettingsController@index')->name('settings');

Here is the default SettingsController class provided by the framework:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Forms\Auth\LogoutForm;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;

class SettingsController extends Controller
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->middleware('auth');
    }

    /**
     * Show the application customer dashboard.
     */
    public function index()
    {
        return view('settings.home', [
            'form' => $this->form(new LogoutForm())
        ]);
    }
}

Views

As previously mentioned, the php console make:auth command creates all the views you need for authentication and place them in the resources/views/auth directory.

Views are minimal and expect at least a layouts/main.blade.php file in order to work. Generally the layouts/main.blade.php file is available on a default theme. If the default has been modified on your project, you can still create a layout inside the root resources/views/layouts directory if necessary.

Forms

The php console make:auth command also creates all the necessary forms you need for authentication and place them in the app/Forms/Auth directory. Feel free to modify the default forms for your needs.

Authenticating

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

Path customization

When a customer is successfully authenticated, they will be redirected to the /settings URI. You can customize the post-authentication redirect location by defining a redirectTo property on the LoginController, RegisterController, ResetPasswordController and the VerificationController.

protected $redirectTo = '/';

Next, you should modify the RedirectIfAuthenticated middleware's handle method to use your new URI when redirecting the customer.

If the redirect path needs custom generation logic, you may define a redirectTo method instead of a redirectTo property:

protected function redirectTo()
{
    return '/path';
}

The redirectTo method will take precedence over the $redirectTo property.

Username customization

By default, the Themosis framework uses the email field for authentication. If you would like to customize this, you may define a username method on your LoginController like so:

public function username()
{
    return 'username';
}

The returned value must represent a table column name as well as the un-prefixed name of your login form input.

You also need to change the login form App\Forms\Auth\LoginForm so it provides an input field with a similar "username" name attribute.

Guard customization

You may also customize the "guard" that is used to authenticate and register customers. To get started, defined a guard method on your LoginController, RegisterController and ResetPasswordController. The method should return a guard instance:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;

public function guard()
{
    return Auth::guard('guard-name');
}

Storage customization

You can modify how new customers are stored into your database by modifying the RegisterController class.

The create method of the RegisterController is responsible for creating new App\Customer records in your database using the Eloquent ORM. You are free to modify this method according to the needs of your database.

There is no validator method as validation is done automatically by the App\Forms\Auth\RegisterForm instance.

Retrieving the authenticated customer

You may access the authenticated customer via the Auth facade:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;

// Get the currently authenticated customer
$customer = Auth::user();

// Get the currently authenticated customer's ID
$id = Auth::id();

Alternatively, once a customer is authenticated, you may access the authenticated customer via an Illuminate\Http\Request instance and its user method. Type-hinted classes will automatically be injected into your controller methods:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Forms\Auth\LogoutForm;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;

class DashboardController extends Controller
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->middleware('auth');
    }

    /**
     * Show the application customer dashboard.
     */
    public function index(Request $request)
    {
        return view('settings.dashboard', [
            'customer' => $request->user()
        ]);
    }
}

Determining if the current customer is authenticated

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

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;

if (Auth::check()) {
    // The customer is logged in...
}

Protecting routes

Route middleware can be used to only allow authenticated customers to access a given route. The framework ships with an auth middleware, which is defined at App\Http\Middleware\Authenticate. Since this middleware is already registered in your HTTP kernel, all you need to do is attach the middleware to a route definition:

Route::get('/settings/profile', function () {
    // Only authenticated customers may see this...
})->middleware('auth');

If you are using controllers, 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');
}

Redirecting unauthenticated customers

When the auth middleware detects an unauthorized customer, it will redirect the customer to the home page by default. You may modify this behavior by updating the redirectTo method in your app/Htpp/Middleware/Authenticate.php file:

/**
 * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
 *
 * @return string
 */
protected function redirectTo($request)
{
    return '/';
}

Specifying a guard

When attaching the auth middleware to a route, you may also specify which guard should be used to authenticate the customer. The guard specified should correspond to one of the keys in the guards array of your config/auth.php configuration file:

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

Login throttling

If you are using the framework built-in LoginController class, the Themosis\Core\Auth\ThrottlesLogins trait is already included in your controller. By default, the customer 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 customer's username/e-mail address and their IP address.

Learn more

The Themosis framework is leveraging the illuminate/auth package for its authentication mechanism. For more information regarding the authentication API, please read the official documentation for details:

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