Month: April 2021

Categories
Web Development

How to get the user id in a service in Symfony 5

Problem solved

I’m no Symfony expert, I write what I find as I find it. Nothing in the documentation really covers this subject, so I am not sure what the correct way is of if there even is one.

There are a few ways I have found to get a user id. None of the classes you can inject such as UserInterface, SessionInterface, TokenInterface, Security etc. contain an actual getUserId() method.

You can  get a user object from the Security class, as seen in the documentation here. To do so you type hint aka Dependency Inject your service constructor with Security but not just any Security will do there is also one by Sensio labs and another. You want this Security

use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Security;

Then your ide wont show it or will warn something about a polymorphic call blah blah, but apparently there is a getId() method of the user returned from Security and you can get a user id like this.


/** @var User $user */
$user = $this->security->getUser()->getId();
if(!empty($user){
$userId = $user->getId();
}

This method may return null if the user is not logged in so you need to check for that. The @var syntax tells the IDE what is going on so it knows there is a getId() method, you will also need to import that class. The User object it refers to is your App/Entity/User class.

Forgive me if anything is wrong.
Link to a Symfony cast with a little more info but not much.

Categories
Resources Web Development

How does login and authentication work in Symfony 5.*

Spaghetti docs suck

This is mostly for myself as a reminder. The most frustrating part of Symfony is Authentication because the information is scattered all over between articles, symfonycasts etc. just all over, like a unicorn farting out rainbow sprinkles.

There are two versions of authentication an old one and a new one. The old one uses Authentication providers the new one users just Authetincators. No one but the authors of Symfony know WTF the difference is though.

Note : to add confusion Symfony refers to what you usually call Sessions as Tokens FFS.

First off a list of files involved in the login process :

  1. The login form obviously app/templates/security/login.html.twig
  2. A security controller app/src/Controller/SecurityController.php
  3. A user Provider aka the User entity class app/src/Entity/User.php
  4. An Authenticator app/src/Security/LoginFormAuthenticator.php

When a user requests /login Symfony first calls LoginFormAuthenticator.php to check to see if the user is logged in/authenticated so the work is not done in the controller like most other actions. To change, add, remove anything from the authentication process you make changes in the LoginFormAuthenticator.php methods.

There is a new experimental Authentication system it still uses authenticators but a slightly different process.

This authenticator is listed in the app/config/packages/security.yaml file under firewalls:main:guard:athenticators as

- App\Security\LoginFormAuthenticator
symfony firewall authenticator section

Every time a request is made the firewall will use the authenticator listed to try to authenticate the user. If authentication fails Symfony secretly behind the scenes tries other ways to authenticate the user as you can see in the image below.

symfony guards
Secret guards attack

As you can see in the image above Symfony will try your guard you listed in the configuration file, but it also tries it’s own secret list of default authenticators.

For information about the login form see this article in the scatterdocs. A little more info about the login form and process from the Symfony Spaghetti docs.

Categories
Resources Web Development

Symfony Session resources list

more resources

Plain session docs – This is the symfony documentation page about Sessions alone. This link shows the basic configuration and use of Sessions in Symfony. This also mentions not starting a session for Anonymous users and has links to other info about sessions.

Configuring Sessions and Save handlers – Symfony documentation link. This covers more about how to configure sessions and their Save Handlers. This is some of the better information about Sessions and how they work in Symfony. It covers the save handlers and more of the configuration information.

Session proxy examples – Symfony Documentation link. This covers how to create your own session handler. It also discusses how to encrypt session data with an example.

Framework configuration – Symfony documentation link. This covers many of the options for the security component of Symfony.

Store sessions in a database – Symfony documentation link that describes how to store session data in a database or Redis.

Session Management – Symfony documentation link. Explains how sessions are managed in symfony. Gives a good overview and important information about how symfony functions. It covers the functions symfony uses to replace PHP session functions and how to use them. This also covers the ways to work with sessions in Symfony. Oddly this covers Flash messages too.