Note: Before using the Auth class, you must specify a session driver.
If you are using the Auth class, you are strongly encouraged to hash and salt all passwords. Web development must be done responsibly. Salted, hashed passwords make a rainbow table attack against your user's passwords impractical.
Salting and hashing passwords is done using the Hash class. The Hash class is uses the bcrypt hashing algorithm. Check out this example:
$password = Hash::make('secret');
The make method of the Hash class will return a 60 character hashed string.
You can compare an unhashed value against a hashed one using the check method on the Hash class:
if (Hash::check('secret', $hashed_value))
{
return 'The password is valid!';
}
Logging a user into your application is simple using the attempt method on the Auth class. Simply pass the username and password of the user to the method. The credentials should be contained in an array, which allows for maximum flexibility across drivers, as some drivers may require a different number of arguments. The login method will return true if the credentials are valid. Otherwise, false will be returned:
$credentials = array('username' => 'example@gmail.com', 'password' => 'secret');
if (Auth::attempt($credentials))
{
return Redirect::to('user/profile');
}
If the user's credentials are valid, the user ID will be stored in the session and the user will be considered "logged in" on subsequent requests to your application.
To determine if the user of your application is logged in, call the check method:
if (Auth::check())
{
return "You're logged in!";
}
Use the login method to login a user without checking their credentials, such as after a user first registers to use your application. Just pass your user object or the user's ID:
Auth::login($user);
Auth::login(15);
It is common to limit access to certain routes only to logged in users. In Laravel this is accomplished using the auth filter. If the user is logged in, the request will proceed as normal; however, if the user is not logged in, they will be redirected to the "login" named route.
To protect a route, simply attach the auth filter:
Route::get('admin', array('before' => 'auth', function() {}));
Note: You are free to edit the auth filter however you like. A default implementation is located in application/routes.php.
Once a user has logged in to your application, you can access the user model via the user method on the Auth class:
return Auth::user()->email;
Note: If the user is not logged in, the user method will return NULL.
Ready to log the user out of your application?
Auth::logout();
This method will remove the user ID from the session, and the user will no longer be considered logged in on subsequent requests to your application.