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09.

Entity Security

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Entity Security

Repeat after me, “We’re really great.” And our security system is almost as cool as we are. So let’s keep up the pace and load users from the database instead of the little list in security.yml.

What we’re about to do is similar to what the awesome open source FOSUserBundle gives you. We’re going to build this all ourselves so that we really understand how things work. Later, if you do use FOSUserBundle, you’ll be a lot more dangerous with it.

Generating the User Entity

Ok, forget about security! Seriously! Just think about the fact that we want to store some user information in the database. To do this, we’ll need a User entity class.

That sounds like a lot of work, so let’s just use the doctrine:generate:entity app/console command:

php app/console doctrine:generate:entity

For entity shortcut name, use UserBundle:User. Remember, Doctrine uses this shortcut syntax for entities.

Give the class just 2 fields:

  • username as a string
  • password as a string

And of course, choose “yes” to generating the repository class. I’ll explain why these are so fabulous in a second.

Once the robots are done writing the code for us, we should have a new User class in the Entity directory of UserBundle. Let’s change the table name to be yoda_user:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Entity/User.php
namespace Yoda\UserBundle\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Table(name="yoda_user")
 * @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass="Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\UserRepository")
 */
class User
{
    // ... the generated properties and getter/setter functions
}

Implementing UserInterface

Right now, this is just a plain, regular Doctrine entity that has nothing to do with security. But, our goal is to load users from this table on login. The first step is to make your class implement a UserInterface:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Entity/User.php
// ...

use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface;

class User implements UserInterface
{
    // ...
}

This interface requires us to have 5 methods and hey! We already have 2 of them: getUsername() and getPassword():

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Entity/User.php
// ...

public function getUsername()
{
    return $this->username;
}

public function getPassword()
{
    return $this->password;
}

Cool! So let’s add the other 3.

First, getRoles() returns an array of roles that the user should get. For now, we’ll hardcode a single role, ROLE_USER:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Entity/User.php
// ...

public function getRoles()
{
    return array('ROLE_USER');
}

Second, add eraseCredentials. Keep this method blank for now. We will add some logic to this later:

public function eraseCredentials()
{
    // blank for now
}

Finally, add getSalt() and just make it return null:

public function getSalt()
{
    return null;
}

I’ll talk more about this method in a second.

Now that the User class implements UserInterface, Symfony’s authentication system will be able to use it. But before we hook that up, let’s add the yoda_user table to the database by running the doctrine:schema:update command:

php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force

Loading Users from Doctrine: security.yml

And for the grand finale, let’s tell the security system to use our entity class!

In security.yml, replace the encoder entry with our user class and set its value to bcrypt:

# app/config/security.yml
security:
    encoders:
        Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User: bcrypt
    # ...

This tells Symfony that the password field on our User will be encoded using the bcrypt algorithm.

Installing password_compat

The one catch is that bcrypt isn’t supported until PHP 5.5. So if you’re using PHP 5.4 or lower, you’ll need to install an extra library via Composer. No problem! Head to your terminal and use the composer require command and pass it ircmaxell/password-compat:

php composer.phar require ircmaxell/password-compat

When it asks, use the ~1.0.3 version. By the way, this require command is just a shortcut that updates our composer.json for us and then runs the Composer update:

"require": {
    "...": "..."
    "ircmaxell/password-compat": "~1.0.3"
},

Using the entity Provider

Now for the Jedi magic! In security.yml, remove the single providers entry and replace it with a new one:

# app/config/security.yml
security:
    # ...

    providers:
        our_database_users:
            entity: { class: UserBundle:User, property: username }

I’m just inventing the our_database_users part, that can be anything. But the entity key is a special built-in provider that knows how to load users via a Doctrine entity.

Yea, and that’s really it! Ok, let’s try it.

When you refresh, you may get an error:

There is no user provider for user "Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\User".

Don’t panic, this is just because we’re still logged in as one of the hard-coded users... even though we just deleted them from security.yml. It’s a one-time error - just refresh and it’ll go away.

Creating and Saving Users