Laravel 5.2 authentication with custom routes

Question

I'm working in a web project using Laravel 5.2

My use case is very simple: Before rendering any page, verify if the user is authenticated. If not, provide a login form with custom authentication (not the Eloquent's default stuff)

After reading about this scenario I have:

// routes.php
Route::get('/', 'HomeController@index');

Then if I want all my pages secured, I require the middleware auth in controller's constructor. All my controllers should follow the same pattern if I want to request a logged in user before serving any page.

// app/Http/Controllers/HomeController.php
<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Requests;

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

  public function index()
  {
      return view('home');
  }
}

So far, so good. If I visit my app at '/' I'm redirected to a /login page.

I created the login page:

// views/auth/login.blade.php
@extends('layouts.app')

@section('content')
    <form class="form-signin" method="post" action="{{ url ('/login') }}">
        {!! csrf_field() !!}
        <h2 class="form-signin-heading">Please sign in</h2>
        <label for="inputUsername" class="sr-only">Username</label>
        <input type="text" id="inputUsername" class="form-control" placeholder="Username" name="username" required autofocus>
        <label for="inputPassword" class="sr-only">Password</label>
        <input type="password" id="inputPassword" class="form-control" placeholder="Password" name="password" required>        
        <button class="btn btn-lg btn-primary btn-block" type="submit">Sign in</button>
    </form>

@endsection

Please notice the action of the form that redirects to /login. Then I update the routes.php by providing the new following routes:

// Authentication Routes...
Route::get('login', 'Auth\AuthController@showLoginForm');
Route::post('login', 'Auth\AuthController@login');
Route::get('logout', 'Auth\AuthController@logout');

Route::get('/', 'HomeController@index');

With these new routes I'm catching login/logout scenarios and assigning AuthController's methods to handle them.

On the already implemented AuthController, I guess I need to define these methods.

I was not able to make this to work or maybe I'm doing this custom authentication in a wrong way.

I have:

// app/Http/Auth/AuthController.php
<?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;
    protected $redirectTo = '/';

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->middleware($this->guestMiddleware(), ['except' => 'logout']);
    }

    // ... lot of default stuff ..

    protected function login($data)
    {
        //
        // do custom login authentication with $data
        // ie: validate thru a web service or something
        //

        return redirect()->intended('/');
    }
}

Any suggestions on how to implement this?

Answer 1

Change your login function to

protected function login(Request $data)
{
    //
    // do custom login authentication with $data
    // ie: validate thru a web service or something
    //

    return redirect()->intended('/');
}

This overrides the function from Illuminate\\Foundation\\Auth\\AuthenticatesUsers that originally used by Laravel Auth

Answer 2

Thanks to everyone who responded to this question. I ended rolling out a custom integration where users are duplicated on the Eloquent's User model and my external service.

Unfortunately the lack of documentation around Laravel 5.2 and custom authentication methods makes this as a patch solution until something more stable comes out.

Thanks and happy coding!