Flag of Ukraine
SymfonyCasts stands united with the people of Ukraine

make:user

Video not working?

It looks like your browser may not support the H264 codec. If you're using Linux, try a different browser or try installing the gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-good packages.

Thanks! This saves us from needing to use Flash or encode videos in multiple formats. And that let's us get back to making more videos :). But as always, please feel free to message us.

No matter how your users authenticate - a login form, social authentication, or an API key - your security system needs some concept of a user: some class that describes the "thing" that is logged in.

Yup, step 1 of authentication is to create a User class. And there's a command that can help us! Find your terminal and run:

symfony console make:user

As a reminder, symfony console is just a shortcut for bin/console... but because I'm using the Docker integration with the Symfony web server, calling symfony console allows the symfony binary to inject some environment variables that point to the Docker database. It won't matter for this command, but it will matter for any command that talks to the database.

Ok, question one:

The name of the user class

Typically, this will be User... though it would be cooler to use something like HumanoidEntity. If the "thing" that logs into your site would be better called a Company or University or Machine, use that name here.

Do you want to store user data in the database via Doctrine?

For us: that's a definite yes... but it's not a requirement. Your user data might be stored on some other server... though even in that case, it's often convenient to store some extra data in your local database... in which case you would also say yes here.

Next:

Enter a property name that will be the unique display name for the user.

I'm going to use email. This is not that important, and I'll explain how it's used in a few minutes. Finally:

Will this app need to hash and check user passwords?

You only need to say yes if it will be your application's responsibility to check the user's password when they log in. We are going to do this... but I'm going to say "no". We'll add it manually a bit later.

Hit enter and... done!

The User Class & Entity

Okay. What did this do? First, it created a User entity and a UserRepository... the exact same stuff you normally get from running make:entity. Let's go check out that new User class: src/Entity/User.php:

... lines 1 - 2
namespace App\Entity;
use App\Repository\UserRepository;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\PasswordAuthenticatedUserInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface;
/**
* @ORM\Entity(repositoryClass=UserRepository::class)
*/
class User implements UserInterface
{
/**
* @ORM\Id
* @ORM\GeneratedValue
* @ORM\Column(type="integer")
*/
private $id;
/**
* @ORM\Column(type="string", length=180, unique=true)
*/
private $email;
/**
* @ORM\Column(type="json")
*/
private $roles = [];
... lines 31 - 113
}

First and foremost, this is a normal boring Doctrine entity: it has annotations - or maybe PHP 8 attributes for you - and an id. It is... just an entity: there is nothing special about it.

UserInterface & Deprecated Methods

The only thing that Symfony cares about is that your user class implements UserInterface. Hold Command or Ctrl and click to jump way into the core code to see this.

This interface really has just 3 methods: getUserIdentifier(), which you see documented above the interface, getRoles()... and another one way down here called eraseCredentials(). If you're confused about why I'm skipping all of these other methods, it's because they're deprecated. In Symfony 6, this interface will only have those 3: getUserIdentifier(), getRoles() and eraseCredentials().

In our User, class, if you scroll down, the make:user command implemented all of this for us. Thanks to how we answered one of its questions, getUserIdentier() returns the email:

... lines 1 - 12
class User implements UserInterface
{
... lines 15 - 48
/**
* A visual identifier that represents this user.
*
* @see UserInterface
*/
public function getUserIdentifier(): string
{
return (string) $this->email;
}
... lines 58 - 113
}

This... isn't too important: it's mostly just a visual representation of your User object... it's used in the web debug toolbar... and in a few optional systems, like the "remember me" system.

If you're using Symfony 5 like I am, you'll notice that the deprecated methods are still generated. They're needed just for backwards compatibility, and you can delete them once you're on Symfony 6.

The getRoles() method deals with permissions:

... lines 1 - 12
class User implements UserInterface
{
... lines 15 - 66
/**
* @see UserInterface
*/
public function getRoles(): array
{
$roles = $this->roles;
// guarantee every user at least has ROLE_USER
$roles[] = 'ROLE_USER';
return array_unique($roles);
}
... lines 78 - 113
}

more on that later. And then getPassword() and getSalt() are both deprecated:

... lines 1 - 12
class User implements UserInterface
{
... lines 15 - 85
/**
* 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;
}
/**
* This method can be removed in Symfony 6.0 - is not needed for apps that do not check user passwords.
*
* @see UserInterface
*/
public function getSalt(): ?string
{
return null;
}
... lines 105 - 113
}

You will still need a getPassword() method if you check passwords on your site - but we'll learn about that later. Finally, eraseCredentials() is part of UserInterface:

... lines 1 - 12
class User implements UserInterface
{
... lines 15 - 105
/**
* @see UserInterface
*/
public function eraseCredentials()
{
// If you store any temporary, sensitive data on the user, clear it here
// $this->plainPassword = null;
}
}

but it's not very important and we'll also talk about it later.

So at a high level... if you ignore the deprecated methods... and the not-so-important eraseCredentials(), the only thing that our User class needs to have is an identifier and a method that returns the array of roles that this user should have. Yup... it's mostly just a User entity.

"providers": The User Provider

The make:user command also made one tweak to our security.yaml file: you can see it right here:

security:
... lines 2 - 7
providers:
# used to reload user from session & other features (e.g. switch_user)
app_user_provider:
entity:
class: App\Entity\User
property: email
... lines 14 - 33

It added what's called a "user provider", which is an object that knows how to load your user objects... whether you're loading that data from an API or from a database. Because we're using Doctrine, we get to use the built-in entity provider: it knows how to fetch our users from the database using the email property.

I wanted you to see this change... but the user provider isn't important yet. I'll show you exactly how and where it's used as we go along.

Next: we have total control over how our User class looks. The power! So let's add a custom field to it and then load up our database with a nice set of dummy users.

Leave a comment!

33
Login or Register to join the conversation
Default user avatar
Default user avatar unknown | posted 7 days ago | edited
Comment was deleted.

Hey @discipolat

Usually inheritance is not a good idea because it makes the code base more complex. I recommend using composition or PHP treats to share some common code among your user type classes. Also, applying inheritance to Doctrine is not always easy. So, unless you got a strong reason to use inheritance I suggest avoiding it

Cheers!

Reply
Default user avatar
Default user avatar unknown | MolloKhan | posted 7 days ago | edited
Comment was deleted.

Are you going to use the same login form and route for everyone? You'll need to write a custom authenticator and perhaps an extra field to determine what type of user is logging in
https://symfony.com/doc/current/security/custom_authenticator.html

1 Reply
t5810 Avatar

Hi Everyone

I am trying to make some demo apps close to the real-life...so I have question:

In my demo app, I have 3 types of users: Users, Companies and Freelancers, so I have those 3 entities.

Companies and Freelancers will have to register (email, password etc), while for the users there will be no registration form, they will be added using the User factory ( I will have one user only).

However, now if I run **bin/console make:registration-form**, console is considering that I want to make registration form for the User entity, which I do have, but I actually want to make registration-form for the Companies and Freelancers.

How can I generate registration forms for the Companies and Freelancers?

Thanks in advance

Reply
Victor Avatar Victor | SFCASTS | t5810 | posted 25 days ago | edited

Hey @t5810 ,

When you call that bin/console make:registration-form - it will ask you "Enter the User class that you want to create during registration". So, I suppose you would need to specify the corrrect entity there instead of the default App\Entity\User, i.e. specify there namespace of those Company/Freelancer entities and that should work I suppose :)

Cheers!

Reply
t5810 Avatar
t5810 Avatar t5810 | Victor | posted 25 days ago | edited

HI Victor

Thanks for the prompt replay. When I type symfony console make:registration-form console reply with:

Creating a registration form for App\Entity\User

 Do you want to add a #[UniqueEntity] validation attribute to your User class to make sure duplicate accounts aren't created? (yes/no) [yes]:

So, I have no way to change the entity for which the registration form will be made.

The only option that I have is: to commit all my changes, and then to proceed with making the changes for the user, and then manually to make the same changes for the Companies and Freelancers, and to revert the changes for the Users.

However, I am trying to learn best practices of using Symfony, and I am not sure if this approach may be considered as such.

Any suggestion will be deeply appreciated.

Regards

Reply
Victor Avatar Victor | SFCASTS | t5810 | posted 22 days ago | edited

Hey @t5810 ,

Hm, probably you're not on the latest version of Maker bundle. Try to update Maker bundle to the latest version first and try again :)

Otherwise, you can generate it for the User entity but then manually tweak the generated code replacing User with other entity you need - also a valid way because the generated code is just a boilerplate that is suppose to be changed for you specific needs :)

Cheers!

Reply
t5810 Avatar

Hi Victor

I upgrade the symfony/maker-bundle to the latest version 1.50.0, same command:

symfony console make:registration-form

Same reply:

Creating a registration form for App\Entity\User

 Do you want to add a #[UniqueEntity] validation attribute to your User class to make sure duplicate accounts aren't created? (yes/no) [yes]:

By the way, I have send you an invitation to the repository, to avoid making this thread too long if that can help somehow to resolve the issue.
Regards

Reply
Victor Avatar Victor | SFCASTS | t5810 | posted 21 days ago | edited

Hey @t5810 ,

Hm, I'm also on the latest v1.50.0, but in the very beginning the command asks me:

Enter the User class that you want to create during registration (e.g. App\Entity\User) [App\Entity\User]:

Probably try to go further, it might be the next (2nd) question for you... because I do have that UniqueEntity and that's why probably it does not ask me :)

Unfortunately, we do not have the bandwidth to look at personal project issues. Anyway, as I said, you can generate a boilerplate code with this command and then change the entity to whatever you want in it.

Cheers!

Reply
t5810 Avatar

Hi Victor

Thanks for your advice. I will create the code for the user and then manually create the code for the rest of the entities that I need.

Thanks.

Reply
Victor Avatar Victor | SFCASTS | t5810 | posted 20 days ago | edited

Hey @t5810 ,

Yeah, sounds like a good strategy. Maker bundle is meant to be a helper that will generate some boilerplate code for you anyway, but you would need to tweak it eventually.

Cheers!

Reply
reflex Avatar
reflex Avatar reflex | posted 5 months ago | edited

at the moment of migrating the migration via symfony console doctrine:migration:migrate, I get the error

exception occurred while executing a query: SQLSTATE[23502]: Not null violation: 7 ERROR:  column "email" of relation "user" contains null values"

In ExceptionConverter.php line 47:

  An exception occurred while executing a query: SQLSTATE[23502]: Not null violation: 7 ERRO  
  R:  column "email" of relation "user" contains null values

I there a manual change to be made on the generated code here?

Reply

Hey @reflex!

Hmmm. Is the failing migration fully creating the new user table? Or does it somehow exist and you're altering it? If I'm reading this correctly, the error indicates that there is already a user table... and this user table already has rows in it. So, when the email column is added (which does not allow null), it doesn't know what value to put for those.

If I'm correct, the fix for this is to either:

A) If you don't have anything deployed to production yet, this isn't a real problem as you won't have this situation on production where you already have rows in your user table. Just drop your database entirely and restart:

symfony console doctrine:database:drop --force
symfony console doctrine:database:create
symfony console doctrine:migrations:migrate

B) If your user table IS already on production, you'll need to be a little fancier:

1) Modify the migration to allow email to be null
2) Add a new line after this in the migration that assigns every existing user some value for their email column (no idea how you would do this - it depends on your business logic).
3) Run the migration
4) Ron make:migration again: it will generate a final migration that will simply change the email column to no allow null.

Let me know if this helps :)

Cheers!

Reply
reflex Avatar

thanks a lot,
I am not sure about the real root cause, but I tried this fix multiple times until it worked,
after executing

symfony console doctrine:database:drop --force
symfony console doctrine:database:create
symfony console doctrine:migrations:migrate

I had some different error messages like An exception occurred while executing a query: SQLSTATE[42704]: Undefined object: 7 ERROR: index "uniq_8d93d6495e23 <br /> 7e06" does not exist and An exception occurred in the driver: SQLSTATE[08006] [7] FATAL: database "app" does not exist similar to this one :
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27915200/cannot-create-postgres-database-with-doctrine

so I just reverted the repo to the state before installing doctrine and security bundle, and retried going step by step again, things seem to work fine now, thanks for the suggestion and sorry for the late reply!!

Reply

Woohoo! Sometimes there are just weird gremlins in the code - good thinking to back up :).

Reply
Rufnex Avatar

Hello,

can someone explain me how to proceed to use an already existing (e.g. customer_main) instead of the user table.
The columns here are email and main_password.

Thank you!

Reply

Hey Rufnex,

My apologies, but I didn't understand your question. Do you mean how to define a custom table/field name?

Cheers!

Reply
Rufnex Avatar

i still don't understand how the security logic works exactly. if you use it, a user table is created. But if I already have a table with user data that has a different name and the password field is different. how would I have to adjust the classes?

Reply

You can re-use your existing user's table, you only need to specify the name of it

#[ORM\Table(name: 'your_table_name')]
class User
{
    #[ORM\Column(name: 'field_name')]
    private string $password;
}

Does it answer your question?

Reply
Rufnex Avatar

Sounds easy ..

To rename the entire class to e.g. MyUserClass is not a good idea?

I will try it. Thank you!

Reply

you can name whatever you want to your user class as long as it implements the UserInterface

Cheers!

Reply
Rufnex Avatar

After i playe arround the whole day, no i'm clear with auth ;o) Thank you.

Reply
Trafficmanagertech Avatar
Trafficmanagertech Avatar Trafficmanagertech | posted 1 year ago

Hello, is there a guide to migrate from the old system to the new one?
I find weird deprecating the User::getUsername() method, for example I use it in twig templates to render the username, I don't see much sense in renaming it to getUserIdentifier, and rename the db column, but I can leave it and the deprecation notice should go away after 6.0, right?

Reply

Hey The_nuts,

Yeah, as soon as you implemented that new getUserIdentifier() - you definitely may keep that getUsername() method as well. The new system will use the getUserIdentifier(), but in your custom code you may continue using getUsername() of course. Actually, I think the deprecation should gone right after that method gone from the interface where it's deprecated.

Unfortunately, no the exact guide about how to migrate from old system to the new one, but we covered it partially in this course, so you basically should port your current system into one we shows in this course.

I hope this helps!

Cheers!

1 Reply
Default user avatar
Default user avatar Franck Kouame | posted 1 year ago | edited
Comment was deleted.

Hey Franck,

I think the first option should be better IMO, and it also will lead to less entities in your project, but really it may depends on your specific case, i.e. how different data should be for those different account types, how many data you will store there, etc. The best would be to implement both cases and profile with a special tool like Blackfire.io that will give you some numbers and you will see what fits better for you. We have a separate course about this tool btw: https://symfonycasts.com/sc...

Cheers!

Reply
vespino_rojo Avatar
vespino_rojo Avatar vespino_rojo | posted 1 year ago

Hi You!
Whats about Docker integration with the Symfony web server, I mean, whats is this?
I'm not php installled on my computer, I only use Docker, but I can't do this with your 'code along with me' because I don't know hot to create tthe JS enviroment.

Reply

Hey vespino_rojo!

The Docker + Symfony web server integration is kind of... "half Docker". It uses Docker to launch any services you have - e.g. database, Elasticsearch, etc - but you still have php installed locally and Node if you want to build the web assets. We're thinking of providing some Docker configuration to the code downloads to make life easier for users that want to use full Docker, but we don't have that yet.

Oh, but about the JS assets. You do not need to build the JS in this tutorial. Because this tutorial is all about security (and not JS stuff), we shipped the pre-built JS & CSS files you need in the public/build directory. So once you launch your web server, those files will simply be there: there is no need to run Webpack/Encore or anything else. We list this as an "optional" step in the README... and it really is optional - you an skip it entirely.

Let me know if that helps!

Cheers!

Reply
Gustavo D. Avatar
Gustavo D. Avatar Gustavo D. | posted 1 year ago

Hello, I'll you guys post more videos this week?

Reply

Hey Gustavo D. !

Yup - one more tomorrow - then we'll start again next week. We usually do one per day - we MAY go faster on this tutorial, but I'm not sure yet. I know, it sucks when the tutorial first comes out and things are slow - apologies!

Cheers!

Reply
Anton S. Avatar

Hi! Can you record a video that will show how to show a list of everyone I invited via a referral link on the site?

Reply

Hey @Работа На дому Интернет работа!

That, unfortunately, will not make it into this video :). But here is how I would implement that. A referral link is fairly simple. First, on your User class, you would probably have something like a referralCode property that stores some random, unique string. This is used to build the referral link. The route for that page would look something like /refer/{referralCode}. In the controller, I would store the referral code in the session and redirect to the registration page. Then, in the registration controller - right after success, but before redirecting - I would check to see if there is a referral code in the session. If there is, I would find which User that referral code belongs to and update something in the database to track this. For example, on the User class, you could add a referredBy ManyToOne to User. So, on the NEW User record, you would call $newUser->setReferredBy($referralUser) where $referralUser is the User that the referralCode belongs to.

Good luck!

Reply
Cat in space

"Houston: no signs of life"
Start the conversation!

This tutorial also works great for Symfony 6!

What PHP libraries does this tutorial use?

// composer.json
{
    "require": {
        "php": ">=8.1",
        "ext-ctype": "*",
        "ext-iconv": "*",
        "babdev/pagerfanta-bundle": "^3.3", // v3.3.0
        "composer/package-versions-deprecated": "^1.11", // 1.11.99.4
        "doctrine/annotations": "^1.0", // 1.13.2
        "doctrine/doctrine-bundle": "^2.1", // 2.6.3
        "doctrine/doctrine-migrations-bundle": "^3.0", // 3.1.1
        "doctrine/orm": "^2.7", // 2.10.1
        "knplabs/knp-markdown-bundle": "^1.8", // 1.9.0
        "knplabs/knp-time-bundle": "^1.11", // v1.16.1
        "pagerfanta/doctrine-orm-adapter": "^3.3", // v3.3.0
        "pagerfanta/twig": "^3.3", // v3.3.0
        "phpdocumentor/reflection-docblock": "^5.2", // 5.2.2
        "scheb/2fa-bundle": "^5.12", // v5.12.1
        "scheb/2fa-qr-code": "^5.12", // v5.12.1
        "scheb/2fa-totp": "^5.12", // v5.12.1
        "sensio/framework-extra-bundle": "^6.0", // v6.2.0
        "stof/doctrine-extensions-bundle": "^1.4", // v1.6.0
        "symfony/asset": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/console": "5.3.*", // v5.3.7
        "symfony/dotenv": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/flex": "^1.3.1", // v1.17.5
        "symfony/form": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/framework-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/monolog-bundle": "^3.0", // v3.7.0
        "symfony/property-access": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/property-info": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/rate-limiter": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/runtime": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/security-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/serializer": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/stopwatch": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/twig-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/ux-chartjs": "^1.3", // v1.3.0
        "symfony/validator": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/webpack-encore-bundle": "^1.7", // v1.12.0
        "symfony/yaml": "5.3.*", // v5.3.6
        "symfonycasts/verify-email-bundle": "^1.5", // v1.5.0
        "twig/extra-bundle": "^2.12|^3.0", // v3.3.3
        "twig/string-extra": "^3.3", // v3.3.3
        "twig/twig": "^2.12|^3.0" // v3.3.3
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "doctrine/doctrine-fixtures-bundle": "^3.3", // 3.4.0
        "symfony/debug-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.4
        "symfony/maker-bundle": "^1.15", // v1.34.0
        "symfony/var-dumper": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "symfony/web-profiler-bundle": "5.3.*", // v5.3.8
        "zenstruck/foundry": "^1.1" // v1.13.3
    }
}
userVoice