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10.

Saving Users

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Start your All-Access Pass

Saving Users

Now that the error is gone, try logging in! Wait, but our user table is empty. So we can see the bad password message, but we can’t actually log in yet.

But we’re pros, so it’s no problem. Let’s copy the LoadEvents fixtures class (LoadEvents.php) into the UserBundle, rename it to LoadUsers, and update the namespaces:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/LoadUsers.php
namespace Yoda\UserBundle\DataFixtures\ORM;

use Doctrine\Common\DataFixtures\FixtureInterface;
use Doctrine\Common\Persistence\ObjectManager;
use Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User;

class LoadUsers implements FixtureInterface
{
    public function load(ObjectManager $manager)
    {
        // todo
    }
}

Saving users is almost easy: just create the object, give it a username and then persist and flush it.

The tricky part is that darn password field, which needs to be encoded with bcrypt:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/LoadUsers.php
// ...
use Yoda\UserBundle\Entity\User;
// ...

public function load(ObjectManager $manager)
{
    $user = new User();
    $user->setUsername('darth');
    // todo - fill in this encoded password... ya know... somehow...
    $user->setPassword('');
    $manager->persist($user);

    // the queries aren't done until now
    $manager->flush();
}

ContainerAwareInterface for Fixtures

But what’s cool is that Symfony gives us an object that can do all that encoding for us. To get it, first make the fixture implement the ContainerAwareInterface:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/LoadUsers.php
// ...

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerAwareInterface;

class LoadUsers implements FixtureInterface, ContainerAwareInterface
{
    // ...
}

This requires one new method - setContainer. In it, we’ll store the $container variable onto a new $container property:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/LoadUsers.php
// ...

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerAwareInterface;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface;

class LoadUsers implements FixtureInterface, ContainerAwareInterface
{
    private $container;

    // ...

    public function setContainer(ContainerInterface $container = null)
    {
        $this->container = $container;
    }
}

Because we implement this interface, Symfony calls this method and passes us the container object before calling load. Remember that the container is the array-like object that holds all the useful objects in the system. We can see a list of those object by running the container:debug console task:

php app/console container:debug

Encoding the Password

Let’s create a helper function called encodePassword to you know encode the password! This step may look strange, but stay with me. First, we ask Symfony for a special “encoder” object that knows how to encrypt our passwords. Remember the bcrypt config we put in security.yml? Yep, this object will use that.

After we grab the encoder, we just call encodePassword(), grab a sandwich and let it do all the work:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/LoadUsers.php
// ...

private function encodePassword(User $user, $plainPassword)
{
    $encoder = $this->container->get('security.encoder_factory')
        ->getEncoder($user)
    ;

    return $encoder->encodePassword($plainPassword, $user->getSalt());
}

Behind the scenes, it takes the plain-text password, generates a random salt, then encrypts the whole thing using bcrypt. Ok, so let’s set this onto the password property:

// src/Yoda/UserBundle/DataFixtures/ORM/LoadUsers.php
// ...

public function load(ObjectManager $manager)
{
    $user = new User();
    $user->setUsername('darth');
    $user->setPassword($this->encodePassword($user, 'darthpass'));
    $manager->persist($user);

    // the queries aren't done until now
    $manager->flush();
}

Try it! Reload the fixtures from the command line:

php app/console doctrine:fixtures:load

Let’s use the query console task to look at what the user looks like:

php app/console doctrine:query:sql "SELECT * FROM yoda_user"

array (size=1)
  0 =>
    array (size=3)
      'id' => string '1' (length=1)
      'username' => string 'user' (length=4)
      'password' => string '$2y$13$BoVE3I5dmVkBjRp.l6uwyOI8Z8Ngokiaa.OUUuHoDbGDBdMRMUrmC' (length=60)

Nice! We can see the encoded password, which for bcrypt, also includes the randomly-generated salt. You do need to store the salt for each user, but with bcrypt, it happens automatically. Symfony requires us to have a getSalt function on our User, but it’s totally not needed with bcrypt.

Back at the browser, we can login! Behind the scenes, here’s basically what’s happening:

  1. A User entity is loaded from the database for the given username;
  2. The plain-text password we entered is encoded with bcrypt;
  3. The encoded version of the submitted password is compared with the saved password field. If they match, then you now have access to roam about this fully armed and operational battle station!