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Authentication Component

You can use the AuthenticationComponent to access the result of authentication, get user identity and logout user. Load the component in your AppController::initialize() like any other component:

$this->loadComponent('Authentication.Authentication', [
    'logoutRedirect' => '/users/login'  // Default is false
]);

Once loaded, the AuthenticationComponent will require that all actions have an authenticated user present, but perform no other access control checks. You can disable this check for specific actions using allowUnauthenticated():

// In your controller's beforeFilter method.
$this->Authentication->allowUnauthenticated(['view']);

Accessing the logged in user

You can get the authenticated user identity data using the authentication component:

$user = $this->Authentication->getIdentity();

You can also get the identity directly from the request instance:

$user = $request->getAttribute('identity');

Checking the login status

You can check if the authentication process was successful by accessing the result object:

// Using Authentication component
$result = $this->Authentication->getResult();

// Using request object
$result = $request->getAttribute('authentication')->getResult();

if ($result->isValid()) {
    $user = $request->getAttribute('identity');
} else {
    $this->log($result->getStatus());
    $this->log($result->getErrors());
}

The result sets objects status returned from getStatus() will match one of these constants in the Result object:

  • ResultInterface::SUCCESS, when successful.

  • ResultInterface::FAILURE_IDENTITY_NOT_FOUND, when identity could not be found.

  • ResultInterface::FAILURE_CREDENTIALS_INVALID, when credentials are invalid.

  • ResultInterface::FAILURE_CREDENTIALS_MISSING, when credentials are missing in the request.

  • ResultInterface::FAILURE_OTHER, on any other kind of failure.

The error array returned by getErrors() contains additional information coming from the specific system against which the authentication attempt was made. For example LDAP or OAuth would put errors specific to their implementation in here for easier logging and debugging the cause. But most of the included authenticators don’t put anything in here.

Logging out the identity

To log an identity out just do:

$this->Authentication->logout();

If you have set the logoutRedirect config, Authentication::logout() will return that value else will return false. It won’t perform any actual redirection in either case.

Alternatively, instead of the component you can also use the service to log out:

$return = $request->getAttribute('authentication')->clearIdentity($request, $response);

The result returned will contain an array like this:

[
    'response' => object(Cake\Http\Response) { ... },
    'request' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) { ... },
]

Note

This will return an array containing the request and response objects. Since both are immutable you’ll get new objects back. Depending on your context you’re working in you’ll have to use these instances from now on if you want to continue to work with the modified response and request objects.

Configure Automatic Identity Checks

By default AuthenticationComponent will automatically enforce an identity to be present during the Controller.startup event. You can have this check applied during the Controller.initialize event instead:

// In your controller's initialize() method.
$this->loadComponent('Authentication.Authentication', [
    'identityCheckEvent' => 'Controller.initialize',
]);

You can also disable identity checks entirely with the requireIdentity option.