.. index:: single: Security; User provider single: Security; Entity provider
The security layer is one of the smartest tools of Symfony. It handles two things: the authentication and the authorization processes. Although it may seem difficult to understand how it works internally, the security system is very flexible and allows you to integrate your application with any authentication backend, like Active Directory, an OAuth server or a database.
This article focuses on how to authenticate users against a database table
managed by a Doctrine entity class. The content of this cookbook entry is split
in three parts. The first part is about designing a Doctrine User
entity
class and making it usable in the security layer of Symfony. The second part
describes how to easily authenticate a user with the Doctrine
:class:`Symfony\\Bridge\\Doctrine\\Security\\User\\EntityUserProvider` object
bundled with the framework and some configuration.
Finally, the tutorial will demonstrate how to create a custom
:class:`Symfony\\Bridge\\Doctrine\\Security\\User\\EntityUserProvider` object to
retrieve users from a database with custom conditions.
This tutorial assumes there is a bootstrapped and loaded
Acme\UserBundle
bundle in the application kernel.
For the purpose of this cookbook, the AcmeUserBundle
bundle contains a
User
entity class with the following fields: id
, username
, salt
,
password
, email
and isActive
. The isActive
field tells whether
or not the user account is active.
To make it shorter, the getter and setter methods for each have been removed to focus on the most important methods that come from the :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\UserInterface`.
Tip
You can :ref:`generate the missing getter and setters<book-doctrine-generating-getters-and-setters>` by running:
$ php app/console doctrine:generate:entities Acme/UserBundle/Entity/User
// src/Acme/UserBundle/Entity/User.php
namespace Acme\UserBundle\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface;
/**
* Acme\UserBundle\Entity\User
*
* @ORM\Table(name="acme_users")
* @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="Acme\UserBundle\Entity\UserRepository")
*/
class User implements UserInterface, \Serializable
{
/**
* @ORM\Column(type="integer")
* @ORM\Id
* @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
*/
private $id;
/**
* @ORM\Column(type="string", length=25, unique=true)
*/
private $username;
/**
* @ORM\Column(type="string", length=32)
*/
private $salt;
/**
* @ORM\Column(type="string", length=40)
*/
private $password;
/**
* @ORM\Column(type="string", length=60, unique=true)
*/
private $email;
/**
* @ORM\Column(name="is_active", type="boolean")
*/
private $isActive;
public function __construct()
{
$this->isActive = true;
$this->salt = md5(uniqid(null, true));
}
/**
* @inheritDoc
*/
public function getUsername()
{
return $this->username;
}
/**
* @inheritDoc
*/
public function getSalt()
{
return $this->salt;
}
/**
* @inheritDoc
*/
public function getPassword()
{
return $this->password;
}
/**
* @inheritDoc
*/
public function getRoles()
{
return array('ROLE_USER');
}
/**
* @inheritDoc
*/
public function eraseCredentials()
{
}
/**
* @see \Serializable::serialize()
*/
public function serialize()
{
return serialize(array(
$this->id,
));
}
/**
* @see \Serializable::unserialize()
*/
public function unserialize($serialized)
{
list (
$this->id,
) = unserialize($serialized);
}
}
Tip
:ref:`Generate the database table<book-doctrine-creating-the-database-tables-schema>`
for your User
entity by running:
$ php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force
In order to use an instance of the AcmeUserBundle:User
class in the Symfony
security layer, the entity class must implement the
:class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\UserInterface`. This
interface forces the class to implement the five following methods:
getRoles()
,getPassword()
,getSalt()
,getUsername()
,eraseCredentials()
For more details on each of these, see :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\UserInterface`.
Note
The :phpclass:`Serializable` interface and its serialize
and unserialize
methods have been added to allow the User
class to be serialized
to the session. This may or may not be needed depending on your setup,
but it's probably a good idea. Only the id
needs to be serialized,
because the :method:`Symfony\\Bridge\\Doctrine\\Security\\User\\EntityUserProvider::refreshUser`
method reloads the user on each request by using the id
.
Below is an export of the User
table from MySQL with user admin
and
password admin
(which has been encoded). For details on how to create
user records and encode their password, see :ref:`book-security-encoding-user-password`.
$ mysql> select * from acme_users;
+----+----------+------+------------------------------------------+--------------------+-----------+
| id | username | salt | password | email | is_active |
+----+----------+------+------------------------------------------+--------------------+-----------+
| 1 | admin | | d033e22ae348aeb5660fc2140aec35850c4da997 | [email protected] | 1 |
+----+----------+------+------------------------------------------+--------------------+-----------+
The next part will focus on how to authenticate one of these users thanks to the Doctrine entity user provider and a couple of lines of configuration.
Authenticating a Doctrine user against the database with the Symfony security
layer is a piece of cake. Everything resides in the configuration of the
:doc:`SecurityBundle</reference/configuration/security>` stored in the
app/config/security.yml
file.
Below is an example of configuration where the user will enter his/her username and password via HTTP basic authentication. That information will then be checked against your User entity records in the database:
.. configuration-block:: .. code-block:: yaml # app/config/security.yml security: encoders: Acme\UserBundle\Entity\User: algorithm: sha1 encode_as_base64: false iterations: 1 role_hierarchy: ROLE_ADMIN: ROLE_USER ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN: [ ROLE_USER, ROLE_ADMIN, ROLE_ALLOWED_TO_SWITCH ] providers: administrators: entity: { class: AcmeUserBundle:User, property: username } firewalls: admin_area: pattern: ^/admin http_basic: ~ access_control: - { path: ^/admin, roles: ROLE_ADMIN } .. code-block:: xml <!-- app/config/security.xml --> <config> <encoder class="Acme\UserBundle\Entity\User" algorithm="sha1" encode-as-base64="false" iterations="1" /> <role id="ROLE_ADMIN">ROLE_USER</role> <role id="ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN">ROLE_USER, ROLE_ADMIN, ROLE_ALLOWED_TO_SWITCH</role> <provider name="administrators"> <entity class="AcmeUserBundle:User" property="username" /> </provider> <firewall name="admin_area" pattern="^/admin"> <http-basic /> </firewall> <rule path="^/admin" role="ROLE_ADMIN" /> </config> .. code-block:: php // app/config/security.php $container->loadFromExtension('security', array( 'encoders' => array( 'Acme\UserBundle\Entity\User' => array( 'algorithm' => 'sha1', 'encode_as_base64' => false, 'iterations' => 1, ), ), 'role_hierarchy' => array( 'ROLE_ADMIN' => 'ROLE_USER', 'ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN' => array('ROLE_USER', 'ROLE_ADMIN', 'ROLE_ALLOWED_TO_SWITCH'), ), 'providers' => array( 'administrator' => array( 'entity' => array( 'class' => 'AcmeUserBundle:User', 'property' => 'username', ), ), ), 'firewalls' => array( 'admin_area' => array( 'pattern' => '^/admin', 'http_basic' => null, ), ), 'access_control' => array( array('path' => '^/admin', 'role' => 'ROLE_ADMIN'), ), ));
The encoders
section associates the sha1
password encoder to the entity
class. This means that Symfony will expect the password that's stored in
the database to be encoded using this algorithm. For details on how to create
a new User object with a properly encoded password, see the
:ref:`book-security-encoding-user-password` section of the security chapter.
The providers
section defines an administrators
user provider. A
user provider is a "source" of where users are loaded during authentication.
In this case, the entity
keyword means that Symfony will use the Doctrine
entity user provider to load User entity objects from the database by using
the username
unique field. In other words, this tells Symfony how to
fetch the user from the database before checking the password validity.
If a User's isActive
property is set to false
(i.e. is_active
is 0 in the database), the user will still be able to login access the site
normally. To prevent "inactive" users from logging in, you'll need to do a
little more work.
The easiest way to exclude inactive users is to implement the
:class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\AdvancedUserInterface`
interface that takes care of checking the user's account status.
The :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\AdvancedUserInterface`
extends the :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\UserInterface`
interface, so you just need to switch to the new interface in the AcmeUserBundle:User
entity class to benefit from simple and advanced authentication behaviors.
The :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\AdvancedUserInterface` interface adds four extra methods to validate the account status:
isAccountNonExpired()
checks whether the user's account has expired,isAccountNonLocked()
checks whether the user is locked,isCredentialsNonExpired()
checks whether the user's credentials (password) has expired,isEnabled()
checks whether the user is enabled.
For this example, the first three methods will return true
whereas the
isEnabled()
method will return the boolean value in the isActive
field.
// src/Acme/UserBundle/Entity/User.php
namespace Acme\UserBundle\Entity;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\AdvancedUserInterface;
class User implements AdvancedUserInterface, \Serializable
{
// ...
public function isAccountNonExpired()
{
return true;
}
public function isAccountNonLocked()
{
return true;
}
public function isCredentialsNonExpired()
{
return true;
}
public function isEnabled()
{
return $this->isActive;
}
}
Now, if you try to authenticate as a user who's is_active
database field
is set to 0, you won't be allowed.
The next session will focus on how to write a custom entity provider to authenticate a user with his username or his email address.
The next step is to allow a user to authenticate with his username or his email address as they are both unique in the database. Unfortunately, the native entity provider is only able to handle a single property to fetch the user from the database.
To accomplish this, create a custom entity provider that looks for a user
whose username or email field matches the submitted login username.
The good news is that a Doctrine repository object can act as an entity user
provider if it implements the
:class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\UserProviderInterface`. This
interface comes with three methods to implement: loadUserByUsername($username)
,
refreshUser(UserInterface $user)
, and supportsClass($class)
. For
more details, see :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\UserProviderInterface`.
The code below shows the implementation of the
:class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\User\\UserProviderInterface` in the
UserRepository
class:
// src/Acme/UserBundle/Entity/UserRepository.php namespace Acme\UserBundle\Entity; use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface; use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserProviderInterface; use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Exception\UsernameNotFoundException; use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Exception\UnsupportedUserException; use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository; use Doctrine\ORM\NoResultException; class UserRepository extends EntityRepository implements UserProviderInterface { public function loadUserByUsername($username) { $q = $this ->createQueryBuilder('u') ->where('u.username = :username OR u.email = :email') ->setParameter('username', $username) ->setParameter('email', $username) ->getQuery(); try { // The Query::getSingleResult() method throws an exception // if there is no record matching the criteria. $user = $q->getSingleResult(); } catch (NoResultException $e) { $message = sprintf( 'Unable to find an active admin AcmeUserBundle:User object identified by "%s".', $username ); throw new UsernameNotFoundException($message, 0, $e); } return $user; } public function refreshUser(UserInterface $user) { $class = get_class($user); if (!$this->supportsClass($class)) { throw new UnsupportedUserException( sprintf( 'Instances of "%s" are not supported.', $class ) ); } return $this->find($user->getId()); } public function supportsClass($class) { return $this->getEntityName() === $class || is_subclass_of($class, $this->getEntityName()); } }
To finish the implementation, the configuration of the security layer must be
changed to tell Symfony to use the new custom entity provider instead of the
generic Doctrine entity provider. It's trivial to achieve by removing the
property
field in the security.providers.administrators.entity
section
of the security.yml
file.
.. configuration-block:: .. code-block:: yaml # app/config/security.yml security: # ... providers: administrators: entity: { class: AcmeUserBundle:User } # ... .. code-block:: xml <!-- app/config/security.xml --> <config> <!-- ... --> <provider name="administrator"> <entity class="AcmeUserBundle:User" /> </provider> <!-- ... --> </config> .. code-block:: php // app/config/security.php $container->loadFromExtension('security', array( ..., 'providers' => array( 'administrator' => array( 'entity' => array( 'class' => 'AcmeUserBundle:User', ), ), ), ..., ));
By doing this, the security layer will use an instance of UserRepository
and
call its loadUserByUsername()
method to fetch a user from the database
whether he filled in his username or email address.
The end of this tutorial focuses on how to store and retrieve a list of roles
from the database. As mentioned previously, when your user is loaded, its
getRoles()
method returns the array of security roles that should be
assigned to the user. You can load this data from anywhere - a hardcoded
list used for all users (e.g. array('ROLE_USER')
), a Doctrine array
property called roles
, or via a Doctrine relationship, as you'll learn
about in this section.
Caution!
In a typical setup, you should always return at least 1 role from the getRoles()
method. By convention, a role called ROLE_USER
is usually returned.
If you fail to return any roles, it may appear as if your user isn't
authenticated at all.
In this example, the AcmeUserBundle:User
entity class defines a
many-to-many relationship with a AcmeUserBundle:Role
entity class.
A user can be related to several roles and a role can be composed of
one or more users. The previous getRoles()
method now returns
the list of related roles. Notice that __construct()
and getRoles()
methods have changed:
// src/Acme/UserBundle/Entity/User.php namespace Acme\UserBundle\Entity; use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection; // ... class User implements AdvancedUserInterface, \Serializable { // ... /** * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="Role", inversedBy="users") * */ private $roles; public function __construct() { $this->roles = new ArrayCollection(); } public function getRoles() { return $this->roles->toArray(); } // ... }
The AcmeUserBundle:Role
entity class defines three fields (id
,
name
and role
). The unique role
field contains the role name
(e.g. ROLE_ADMIN
) used by the Symfony security layer to secure parts
of the application:
// src/Acme/Bundle/UserBundle/Entity/Role.php namespace Acme\UserBundle\Entity; use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Role\RoleInterface; use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection; use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM; /** * @ORM\Table(name="acme_roles") * @ORM\Entity() */ class Role implements RoleInterface { /** * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="integer") * @ORM\Id() * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO") */ private $id; /** * @ORM\Column(name="name", type="string", length=30) */ private $name; /** * @ORM\Column(name="role", type="string", length=20, unique=true) */ private $role; /** * @ORM\ManyToMany(targetEntity="User", mappedBy="roles") */ private $users; public function __construct() { $this->users = new ArrayCollection(); } /** * @see RoleInterface */ public function getRole() { return $this->role; } // ... getters and setters for each property }
For brevity, the getter and setter methods are hidden, but you can :ref:`generate them <book-doctrine-generating-getters-and-setters>`:
$ php app/console doctrine:generate:entities Acme/UserBundle/Entity/User
Don't forget also to update your database schema:
php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force
This will create the acme_role
table and a user_role
that stores
the many-to-many relationship between acme_user
and acme_role
. If
you had one user linked to one role, your database might look something like
this:
$ mysql> select * from acme_users;
+----+-------+------------+
| id | name | role |
+----+-------+------------+
| 1 | admin | ROLE_ADMIN |
+----+-------+------------+
mysql> select * from user_role;
+---------+---------+
| user_id | role_id |
+---------+---------+
| 1 | 1 |
+---------+---------+
And that's it! When the user logs in, Symfony security system will call the
User::getRoles
method. This will return an array of Role
objects
that Symfony will use to determine if the user should have access to certain
parts of the system.
What's the purpose of the RoleInterface?
Notice that the Role
class implements
:class:`Symfony\\Component\\Security\\Core\\Role\\RoleInterface`. This is
because Symfony's security system requires that the User::getRoles
method
returns an array of either role strings or objects that implement this interface.
If Role
didn't implement this interface, then User::getRoles
would need to iterate over all the Role
objects, call getRole
on each, and create an array of strings to return. Both approaches are
valid and equivalent.
To improve performance and avoid lazy loading of roles when retrieving a user
from the custom entity provider, you can use a Doctrine join to the roles
relationship in the UserRepository::loadUserByUsername()
method. This will
fetch the user and his associated roles with a single query:
// src/Acme/UserBundle/Entity/UserRepository.php namespace Acme\UserBundle\Entity; // ... class UserRepository extends EntityRepository implements UserProviderInterface { public function loadUserByUsername($username) { $q = $this ->createQueryBuilder('u') ->select('u, r') ->leftJoin('u.roles', 'r') ->where('u.username = :username OR u.email = :email') ->setParameter('username', $username) ->setParameter('email', $username) ->getQuery(); // ... } // ... }
The QueryBuilder::leftJoin()
method joins and fetches related roles from
the AcmeUserBundle:User
model class when a user is retrieved with his email
address or username.