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11.

Giving Users Passwords

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Symfony doesn't really care if the users in your system have passwords or not. If you're building a login system that reads API keys from a header, then there are no passwords. The same is true if you have some sort of SSO system. Your users might have passwords... but they enter them on some other site.

But for us, we do want each user to have a password. When we used the make:user command earlier, it actually asked us if we wanted our users to have passwords. We answered no... so that we could do all of this manually. But in a real project, I would answer "yes" to save time.

PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface

We know that all User classes must implement UserInterface:

132 lines | src/Entity/User.php
// ... lines 1 - 7
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface;
// ... lines 9 - 12
class User implements UserInterface
{
// ... lines 15 - 130
}

Then, if you need to check user passwords in your application, you also need to implement a second interface called PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface:

130 lines | src/Entity/User.php
// ... lines 1 - 6
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface;
// ... lines 8 - 12
class User implements UserInterface, PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface
{
// ... lines 15 - 128
}

This requires you to have one new method: getPassword().

If you're using Symfony 6, you won't have this yet, so add it:

132 lines | src/Entity/User.php
// ... lines 1 - 12
class User implements UserInterface
{
// ... lines 15 - 90
/**
* This method can be removed in Symfony 6.0 - is not needed for apps that do not check user passwords.
*
* @see PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface
*/
public function getPassword(): ?string
{
return null;
}
// ... lines 100 - 130
}

I do have it because I'm using Symfony 5 and the getPassword() method is needed for backwards compatibility: it used to be part of UserInterface.

Now that our users will have a password, and we're implementing PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface, I'm going to remove this comment above the method:

130 lines | src/Entity/User.php
// ... lines 1 - 12
class User implements UserInterface, PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface
{
// ... lines 15 - 90
/**
* @see PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface
*/
public function getPassword(): ?string
{
return null;
}
// ... lines 98 - 128
}

Storing a Hashed Password for each User

Ok, let's forget about security for a minute. Instead, focus on the fact that we need to be able to store a unique password for each user in the database. This means that our user entity needs a new field! Find your terminal and run:

symfony console make:entity

Let's update the User entity, to add a new field call password... which is a string, 255 length is overkill but fine... and then say "no" to nullable. Hit enter to finish.

Back over in the User class, it's... mostly not surprising. We have a new $password property... and at the bottom, a new setPassword() method:

142 lines | src/Entity/User.php
// ... lines 1 - 12
class User implements UserInterface, PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface
{
// ... lines 15 - 36
/**
* @ORM\Column(type="string", length=255)
*/
private $password;
// ... lines 41 - 134
public function setPassword(string $password): self
{
$this->password = $password;
return $this;
}
}

Notice that it did not generate a getPassword() method... because we already had one. But we do need to update this to return $this->password:

142 lines | src/Entity/User.php
// ... lines 1 - 12
class User implements UserInterface, PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface
{
// ... lines 15 - 98
public function getPassword(): ?string
{
return $this->password;
}
// ... lines 103 - 140
}

Very important thing about this $password property: it is not going to store the plaintext password. Never ever store the plaintext password! That's the fastest way to have a security breach... and lose friends.

Instead, we're going to store a hashed version of the password... and we'll see how to generate that hashed password in a minute. But first, let's make the migration for the new property:

symfony console make:migration

Go peek at that file to make sure everything looks good:

32 lines | migrations/Version20211001185505.php
// ... lines 1 - 12
final class Version20211001185505 extends AbstractMigration
{
public function getDescription(): string
{
return '';
}
public function up(Schema $schema): void
{
// this up() migration is auto-generated, please modify it to your needs
$this->addSql('ALTER TABLE user ADD password VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL');
}
public function down(Schema $schema): void
{
// this down() migration is auto-generated, please modify it to your needs
$this->addSql('ALTER TABLE user DROP password');
}
}

Tip

If you are using PostgreSQL, you should modify your migration. Add DEFAULT '' at the end so that the new column can be added without an error:

$this->addSql('ALTER TABLE user ADD password VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT \'\'');

And... it does! Close it... and run it:

symfony console doctrine:migrations:migrate

The password_hashers Config

Perfect! Now that our users have a new password column in the database, let's populate that in our fixtures. Open up src/Factory/UserFactory.php and find getDefaults().

Again, what we are not going to do is set password to the plain-text password. Nope, that password property needs to store the hashed version of the password.

Open up config/packages/security.yaml. This has a little bit of config on top called password_hashers, which tells Symfony which hashing algorithm it should use for hashing user passwords:

39 lines | config/packages/security.yaml
security:
// ... lines 2 - 6
# https://symfony.com/doc/current/security.html#c-hashing-passwords
password_hashers:
Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface: 'auto'
// ... lines 10 - 39

This config says that any User classes that implement PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface - which our class, of course, does - will use the auto algorithm where Symfony chooses the latest and greatest algorithm automatically.

The Password Hasher Service

Thanks to this config, we have access to a "hasher" service that's able to convert a plaintext password into a hashed version using this auto algorithm. Back inside UserFactory, we can use that to set the password property:

60 lines | src/Factory/UserFactory.php
// ... lines 1 - 28
final class UserFactory extends ModelFactory
{
// ... lines 31 - 37
protected function getDefaults(): array
{
return [
// ... lines 41 - 42
'plainPassword' => 'tada',
];
}
// ... lines 46 - 58
}

In the constructor, add a new argument: UserPasswordHasherInterface $passwordHasher. I'll hit Alt+Enter and go to "Initialize properties" to create that property and set it:

69 lines | src/Factory/UserFactory.php
// ... lines 1 - 6
use Symfony\Component\PasswordHasher\Hasher\UserPasswordHasherInterface;
// ... lines 8 - 29
final class UserFactory extends ModelFactory
{
private UserPasswordHasherInterface $passwordHasher;
public function __construct(UserPasswordHasherInterface $passwordHasher)
{
parent::__construct();
$this->passwordHasher = $passwordHasher;
}
// ... lines 40 - 67
}

Below, we can set password to $this->passwordHasher->hashPassword() and then pass it some plain-text string.

Well... to be honest... while I hope this makes sense on a high level... this won't quite work because the first argument to hashPassword() is the User object... which we don't have yet inside getDefaults().

That's ok because I like to create a plainPassword property on User to help make all of this easier anyways. Let's add that next, finish the fixtures and update our authenticator to validate the password. Oh, but don't worry: that new plainPassword property won't be stored in the database.