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Authentication ​

Leaf Auth

Authentication without turning your app into a maze.

Leaf Auth gives you login, registration, sessions, JWT, password hashing, user management, protected routes, and database-backed identity with a small API you can understand and extend.

install
$ leaf install auth
login, signup, sessions, JWT, middleware

Auth covers

User identity

Register, login, logout, and access the authenticated user.

Route protection

Protect pages, dashboards, APIs, and role-aware workflows.

AI-friendly setup

Auth commands and config give assistants a clear path for secure user flows.

Using Leaf MVC?

Use the MVC auth guide when you want controllers, routes, config files, and app structure.

Open MVC auth

Setting up ​

You can install Leaf Auth using the Leaf CLI:

bash
leaf install auth
bash
composer require leafs/auth

The next step is to link your database and start signing users in.

Connecting to a database ​

To do any kind of authentication, you need to connect to some kind of database which will store your users' data. If you are already using Leaf DB or Leaf MVC, then your database connection will automatically be used by Leaf Auth, so you don't need to connect to your database again.

If you are NOT using Leaf DB or Leaf MVC, you can connect to your database manually:

php
auth()->connect([
  'dbtype' => '...',
  'charset' => '...',
  'port' => '...',
  'host' => '...',
  'dbname' => '...',
  'user' => '...',
  'password' => '...'
]);
php
$db = new PDO('mysql:dbname=test;host=127.0.0.1', 'root', '');

auth()->dbConnection($db);

// you can use leaf auth the same way you always have

Database Considerations ​

Leaf Auth doesn't give you any structure for your database, with that, you can structure your database in any way you prefer. However, there are some things you should note:

  1. By default, Leaf Auth assumes that your database primary key is id. If you have a database where you are using another field, say admin_id as the primary key, you will need to tell Leaf the name of your primary key. You can do this using the id.key config:

    php
    auth()->config('id.key', 'admin_id');
    php
    'id.key' => 'admin_id'

  2. Leaf Auth assumes that you will save your users in a database table named users, this might however not be the case for your application. If you want to use a different table, you can configure Leaf Auth using db.table:

    php
    auth()->config('db.table', 'admins');
    php
    'db.table' => 'admins'