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> Symfony 2 > Starting in Symfony2: Course 2 (2.4+)
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26.

Automatically Authenticating after Registration

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Automatically Authenticating after Registration

After registration, let’s log the user in automatically. Create a private function called authenticateUser inside RegisterController. Normally, authentication happens automatically, but we can also trigger it manually:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Entity/Controller/RegisterController.php
// ...
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Authentication\Token\UsernamePasswordToken;

private function authenticateUser(User $user)
{
    $providerKey = 'secured_area'; // your firewall name
    $token = new UsernamePasswordToken($user, null, $providerKey, $user->getRoles());

    $this->container->get('security.context')->setToken($token);
}

This code might look strange, and I don’t want you to worry about it too much. The basic idea is that we create a token, which holds details about the user, and then pass this into Symfony’s security system.

Call this method right after registration:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/Entity/Controller/RegisterController.php
// ...

if ($form->isValid()) {
    // .. code that saves the user, sets the flash message

    $this->authenticateUser($user);

    $url = $this->generateUrl('event');

    return $this->redirect($url);
}

Try it out! After registration, we’re redirected back to the homepage. But if you check the web debug toolbar, you’ll see that we’re also authenticated as Padmé. Sweet!

Redirecting back to the original URL

Suppose an anonymous user tries to access a page and is redirected to /login. Then, they register for a new account. After registration, wouldn’t it be nice to redirect them back to the page they were originally trying to access?

Yes! And that’s possible because Symfony stores the original, protected URL in the session:

$key = '_security.'.$providerKey.'.target_path';
$session = $this->getRequest()->getSession();

 // get the URL to the last page, or fallback to the homepage
 if ($session->has($key)) {
     $url = $session->get($key)
     $session->remove($key);
 } else {
     $url = $this->generateUrl('homepage');
 }

The session storage key used here is pretty internal, and could change in the future. So use with caution!