Hi I am building my first website with codeigniter. I am using registration form to allow users to register on the site. I have already built up the form and was heading towards login methods when I came across some authentication libraries in codeigniter. Some of them were ion auth, tank auth, etc. I heard that ion auth is pretty good one over others I want to know whether it is worth using it now when I have built my registration system already or should I skip to building custom authentication library?
All of these authentication libraries work in 90% of users needs. For instance Tank auth (my personal favorite) has a lot of features which can be disabled (so it is modular) and thus you can create authentication with elements suitable for your web site. If you find these elements necessary and you do not have time/knowledge/... to code it yourself, I suggest that you implement library.
However if you have some special authentication requirements or you do not need those additional features, you should stick with your custom made. Or you can choose to write one yourself, and use it in your projects. Benefits of custom made auth library are: you will learn a lot in the way and you will have all the features you want and need just the way you like it.
Both ways have good/bad sides - it is up to you.
Thank you for your time. All the best!
If all you've built out so far is the views you can easily drop Ion Auth in to handle your authentication.
The controller and views included with Ion Auth are just examples to get people started.
Related
I start building a new app and wonder what will be the best way to implement auth - security wise.
What are the cons, pros, and differences between the Laravel make:auth and using jwt-auth.
Is Laravel's default auth will be enough?
This description is pragmatic approach so you can do something else if you want.
I think while developing an API you should use JWT based authentication mechanism.
The Json Web Token(JWT) tokens includes user information in itself. So it giving so much important benefit to manage session. First and most important of the benefits is you can be manage sessions without storing them at server. I would like to explaint it just to avoid misunderstanding, you can have store it at server but it's not necessary except a few scenario. These scenarios depend on how you could designed your authentication.
I able to do a lot of more explains about of it but in summary if you are developing an API I propose you would use JWT-Token.
I am developing a web system in php using the laravel framework, I arrived at the part of authentication of users, where it is not allowed the type of user x access to page y. What is the best way to do this with laravel? I thought about creating a session and saving the id of the user, so every time he accesses a certain controller I check if he has access to the id or not. so I had some doubts.
Is this a good way to perform this authentication?
Is this really safe?
is there any way for the client to change my session?
What would be a better method for authenticating user access?
Laravel provides a very good authentication system out of the box. Even though Hacking is inevitable it provides very good protection and since Laravel is pretty popular framework you don't have to worry about the security part. if there is any security bug, patches will be available almost immediately.
And your second concern can a client can change the session ? the answer is NO, if you code it properly. session resides in the server unlike cookies, so there is no direct way for a user to change the session. if you follow good coding practices you are good to go.
And how do you limit userA from accessing pageB. This is a pretty common feature needed in almost all the applications. As of now Laravel does not provide an out of the box solution for this. but this is pretty simple, you can add a role column to the users table, and check whether user have appropriate permission in each page. Laravel keeps the user object in the session, and it is avilable via the auth() helper or Auth Facade. if you want a little sophisticated solution there is a package out there [entrust][1]. it seems a good choice.
You may want to read about
Authorization
Csrf Protection
Authentication
I hope I have addressed all your concerns
Laravel provides a simple way to authorize action thats purpose built for what you need:
https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/authorization
Confusion about API auth types in Laravel?
I'm currently learning how to create an API in Laravel and I found myself into this confusing concepts. After a few days of research and practice, I could finally understand enough this concepts to make a mini-guide. I had to look into a lot of separate webpages so I will make my best attempt to explain the relationship between them.
What are these concepts?
Passport is an official Laravel package that implements Oauth2 and JWT.
Auth0 is an authentication and authorization service. It is kinda "all in one" solution for API auth. It implements JWT by default and can implement Oauth2 as well as many other protocols.
OAuth2 is an authorization framework or protocol that enables applications(the ones you're going to build) to
give limited access to user accounts such as Facebook, GitHub, etc... Imagine that your app grew big enough to offer a "Sign in with APP NAME HERE" or provide limited access to your users account to other third-party applications. With Oauth2 you can achieve this among many other things.
JWT is a token format. In other words, it is how data will be arranged to create a token. Another token format would be SWT.
In other words:
Passport implements -> Oauth2 and JWT.
Auth0 can implement -> Oauth2 or many other protocols like LDAP, OPEN ID, etc...
Oauth2 can implement -> JWT or other token formats like SWT...
What should you use?
Not only it would be crazy for a beginner to create its own Oauth2 implementation compatible with Laravel, but also chances are that if you're reading this is because you don't know exactly how to all the Oauth2 complexity. Oauth2 out. All we have remeaning is three package options. Passport, tymondesigns/jwt-auth and Auth0.
Before continuing, let me note that when I refer to 'JWT' or 'plain JWT' I really mean to the tymondesigns/jwt-auth package. The real match comes between Auth0, Passport and plain JWT...
Auth0 is a Swiss army knife compared to Passport and JWT. This knife is an all in one solution. It can do a lot of stuff on its own plus some extras that you might never need without depending on Laravel or other frameworks. To not extend this too long, let me just say that it can do whatever you could possibly imagine as an API beginner. Also, you would have a really good dashboard straight out of the box which will allow you to manage all aspects of your API. From third-party authentication to add more apps (mobile, web, desktop) that can consume that API.
Passport could be compared with a more delicate knife. Its creators knew what it will cut and designed it specifically for those tasks. In other words, it was built especially for Laravel to work smoothly and flawlessly without having many bells and whistles bothering around. Though, don't forget that in the long run you can implement your own code on top of it. Like a nice and custom dashboard to manage your API clients.
Finally, back to the knife analogy, I like to compare JWT with a sharpened blade without any fancy extras. It's lightweight, functional, secure and does its job. You get the benefit that you will not have to worry about all extras that the other packages add. Furthermore, you can upgrade this knife however you want due to its flexibility or even switch to another package if you need a heavier upgrade.
Conclusion
It depends on you, if you want to cut everything that might be thrown at you and stay more in the API world than in Laravel (Auth0), narrow down to the focus of Laravel and Oauth2 for third party authentications (Passport) or have a basic secure data transfer out of the box via API (JWT). And yes... You can also link your app to your mobile app with the three of them.
Personally I USED to prefer Passport because:
I like to work with the official Laravel packages.
Besides the many extra routes and tables added to my project, its performance will not be affected.
If I started with the most basic API auth and wanted to scale, it would be much easier.
The coziness of working with a Laravel Package.
Still talking about the last point, some may say that Auth0 community is small. It basically is, but also it has awesome client support personnel.
Edit: (Now I prefer Tymon JWT)
Tutorials on Passport and Oauth2
Laravel and Oauth2 Docs explanation of tokens might be a little difficult. Here is a Good Explanation of Passport's(therefore Oauth2) Different Types of Tokens and Their Use Cases. Since I couldn't figure out the "routes" part of the tutorial I wouldn't recommend the tutorial part.
This is a Good Passport Video Tutorial which also uses the PostMan Chrome app for API calls. For those of you who are new to this API stuff, apps like PostMan will make your work a lot easier than using a "curl" Linux/Mac command. You could watch the complete series or just the Passport part. At the moment I'm stuck on video 4. Here's my Stack Overflow question.
Resources
Many of the resources are all spread above in the article but I also have some here.
Stack Overflow JWT vs Oauth
Auth0 explanation of Oauth2
An Introduction to OAuth2
OAuth2 Simplified
I implemented codeigniter Ion_Auth library for user registration and etc. I noticed it does not have a built-in user manager such as edit user accounts. Does a user manager such as edit user accounts exist? I can always code one, but I rather not reinvent the wheel.
I use Ion Auth too, it is pretty well coded I and I like writing code with it.
I also needed users editing, but I find it quite easy, because I needed only one simple form, because the library has update_user() and you need only to pass an array with your new data.
Download a CMS because it looks to me you have little or no experience with codeigniter or php for that matter. I dont mean that in a rude way by any means but if you cant perform simple CRUD operations, install a pre-built system as it will save you lots of headaches.
I've just started using CI and am also using Ion Auth for authentication. I'm handling user signup/authentication exclusively with ion auth and extending public profiles using Grocery CRUD. All public info can be viewed globally, but only edited by the user that owns it (as defined by linking the ion auth user table to the extended profile table). I don't know if this is the best way to do it, but it is what I'm doing so far.
I have developed a registration form using codeigniter framework which works fine. But now I want to integrate it with ion auth library to make it more scalable. But I am new to using external libraries in codeigniter and I don't know how to use ion auth to build a registration system. Can any one please let me know some good tutorials?
first of all have you read the official documentation which includes a detailed installation procedure ?
Also I think Ion Auth doesnt provide templates (views ) for handling registration,etc
Also have you considered using tank auth ?
Tank auth provides some basic views which handles registration, login etc.
Edit :
have a look at the views provided here