Myth:Auth

Flexible, Powerful, Secure auth package for CodeIgniter 4.

Project Notice

As of June 2022 CodeIgniter now has an official Authentication library, CodeIgniter Shield. If you are looking for an authentication solution for a new project then that is the recommended solution.

This project is now maintained by volunteers. If you interact with the project repository there may be delays in receiving response. Please direct support questions to GitHub Discussions or to CodeIgniter's Forums or Slack Channel.

Requirements

• PHP 7.4+, 8.0+
• CodeIgniter 4.1+

Features

This is meant to be a one-stop shop for 99% of your web-based authentication needs with CI4. It includes the following primary features:

• Password-based authentication with remember-me functionality for web apps
• Flat RBAC per NIST standards, described here and here.
• All views necessary for login, registration and forgotten password flows.
• Publish files to the main application via a CLI command for easy customization
• Debug Toolbar integration
• Email-based account verification

Installation

Installation is best done via Composer. Assuming Composer is installed globally, you may use the following command:

    > composer require myth/auth

This will add the latest stable release of Myth:Auth as a module to your project.

Manual Installation

Should you choose not to use Composer to install, you can clone or download this repo and then enable it by editing app/Config/Autoload.php and adding the Myth\Auth namespace to the $psr4 array. For example, if you copied it into app/ThirdParty/:

    $psr4 = [
        'Config'      => APPPATH . 'Config',
        APP_NAMESPACE => APPPATH,
        'App'         => APPPATH,
        'Myth\Auth'   => APPPATH . 'ThirdParty/myth-auth/src',
    ];

Upgrading

Be sure to check the Changes Docs for necessary steps to take after upgrading versions.

Configuration

Once installed you need to configure the framework to use the Myth\Auth library. In your application, perform the following setup:

1. Edit app/Config/Email.php and verify that a fromName and fromEmail are set as that is used when sending emails for password reset, etc.

2. Edit app/Config/Validation.php and add the following value to the ruleSets array: \Myth\Auth\Authentication\Passwords\ValidationRules::class

3. Ensure your database is setup correctly, then run the Auth migrations:

    > php spark migrate -all  

NOTE: This library uses your application's cache settings to reduce database lookups. If you want to make use of this, simply make sure that your are using a cache engine other than dummy and it is properly setup. The GroupModel and PermissionModel will handle caching and invalidation in the background for you.

Overview

When first installed, Myth:Auth is setup to provide all of the basic authentication services for you, including new user registration, login/logout, and forgotten password flows.

"Remember Me" functionality is turned off by default though it can be turned on by setting the $allowRemembering variable to be true in Config/Auth.php.

Routes

Routes are defined in Auth's Config/Routes.php file. This file is automatically located by CodeIgniter when it is processing the routes. If you would like to customize the routes, you should copy the file to the app/Config directory, update the namespace, and make your route changes there. You may also use the $reservedRoutes property of Config\Auth to redirect internal route names.

Views

Basic views are provided that are based on Bootstrap 4 for all features.

You can easily override the views used by editing Config/Auth.php, and changing the appropriate values within the $views variable:

public $views = [
    'login'       => 'Myth\Auth\Views\login',
    'register'    => 'Myth\Auth\Views\register',
    'forgot'      => 'Myth\Auth\Views\forgot',
    'reset'       => 'Myth\Auth\Views\reset',
    'emailForgot' => 'Myth\Auth\Views\emails\forgot',
];

NOTE: If you're not familiar with how views can be namespaced in CodeIgniter, please refer to the CodeIgniter User Guide for section on Code Module support.

Services

The following Services are provided by the package:

authentication

Provides access to any of the authentication packages that Myth:Auth knows about. By default it will return the "Local Authentication" library, which is the basic password-based system.

    $authenticate = service('authentication');

You can specify the library to use as the first argument:

    $authenticate = service('authentication', 'jwt');

authorization

Provides access to any of the authorization libraries that Myth:Auth knows about. By default it will return the "Flat" authorization library, which is a Flat RBAC (role-based access control) as defined by NIST. It provides user-specific permissions as well as group (role) based permissions.

    $authorize = service('authorization');

passwords

Provides direct access to the Password validation system. This is an expandable system that currently supports many of NIST's latest Digital Identity guidelines. The validator comes with a dictionary of over 620,000 common/leaked passwords that can be checked against. A handful of variations on the user's email/username are automatically checked against.

    $authenticate = service('passwords');

Most of the time you should not need to access this library directly, though, as a new Validation rule is provided that can be used with the Validation library, strong_password. In order to enable this, you must first edit app/Config/Validation.php and add the new ruleset to the available rule sets:

     public $ruleSets = [
        \CodeIgniter\Validation\Rules::class,
        \CodeIgniter\Validation\FormatRules::class,
        \CodeIgniter\Validation\FileRules::class,
        \CodeIgniter\Validation\CreditCardRules::class,
        \Myth\Auth\Authentication\Passwords\ValidationRules::class,
    ];

Now you can use strong_password in any set of rules for validation:

    $validation->setRules([
        'username' => 'required',
        'password' => 'required|strong_password'
    ]);

Helper Functions

Myth:Auth comes with its own Helper that includes the following helper functions to ease access to basic features. Be sure to load the helper before using these functions: helper('auth');

Hint: Add 'auth' to any controller's $helper property to have it loaded automatically, or the same in app/Controllers/BaseController.php to have it globally available. the auth filters all pre-load the helper so it is available on any filtered routes.

logged_in()

• Function: Checks to see if any user is logged in.
• Parameters: None
• Returns: true or false

user()

• Function: Returns the User instance for the current logged in user.
• Parameters: None
• Returns: The current User entity, or null

user_id()

• Function: Returns the User ID for the current logged in user.
• Parameters: None
• Returns: The current User's integer ID, or null

in_groups()

• Function: Ensures that the current user is in at least one of the passed in groups.
• Parameters: Group IDs or names, as either a single item or an array of items.
• Returns: true or false

has_permission()

• Function: Ensures that the current user has at least one of the passed in permissions.
• Parameters: Permission ID or name.
• Returns: true or false

Users

Myth:Auth uses CodeIgniter Entities for it's User object, and your application must also use that class. This class provides automatic password hashing as well as utility methods for banning/un-banning, password reset hash generation, and more.

It also provides a UserModel that should be used as it provides methods needed during the password-reset flow, as well as basic validation rules. You are free to extend this class or modify it as needed.

The UserModel can automatically assign a role during user creation. Pass the group name to the withGroup() method prior to calling insert() or save() to create a new user and the user will be automatically added to that group.

    $user = $userModel
                ->withGroup('guests')
                ->insert($data);

User registration already handles this for you, and looks to the Auth config file's, $defaultUserGroup setting for the name of the group to add the user to. Please, keep in mind that $defaultUserGroup variable is not set by default.

Toolbar

Myth:Auth includes a toolbar collector to make it easy for developers to work with and troubleshoot the authentication process. To enable the collector, edit app/Config/Toolbar.php and add it to the list of active collectors:

	public $collectors = [
		\CodeIgniter\Debug\Toolbar\Collectors\Timers::class,
		\CodeIgniter\Debug\Toolbar\Collectors\Database::class,
        ...
		\Myth\Auth\Collectors\Auth::class,
	];

Restricting by Route

If you specify each of your routes within the app/Config/Routes.php file, you can restrict access to users by group/role or permission with Controller Filters.

First, edit application/Config/Filters.php and add the following entries to the aliases property:

    'login'      => \Myth\Auth\Filters\LoginFilter::class,
    'role'       => \Myth\Auth\Filters\RoleFilter::class,
    'permission' => \Myth\Auth\Filters\PermissionFilter::class,

Global restrictions

The role and permission filters require additional parameters, but LoginFilter can be used to restrict portions of a site (or the entire site) to any authenticated user. If no logged in user is detected then the filter will redirect users to the login form.

Restrict routes based on their URI pattern by editing app/Config/Filters.php and adding them to the $filters array, e.g.:

public filters = [
    'login' => ['before' => ['account/*']],
];

Or restrict your entire site by adding the LoginFilter to the $globals array:

    public $globals = [
        'before' => [
            'honeypot',
            'login',
    ...

Restricting a single route

Any single route can be restricted by adding the filter option to the last parameter in any of the route definition methods:

$routes->get('admin/users', 'UserController::index', ['filter' => 'permission:manage-user'])
$routes->get('admin/users', 'UserController::index', ['filter' => 'role:admin,superadmin'])

The filter can be either role or permission, which restricts the route by either group or permission. You must add a comma-separated list of groups or permissions to check the logged in user against.

Restricting Route Groups

In the same way, entire groups of routes can be restricted within the group() method:

$routes->group('admin', ['filter' => 'role:admin,superadmin'], function($routes) {
    ...
});

Customization

See the Extending documentation.