Laravel Sanctum Tutorial

Laravel Sanctum Tutorial, formerly known as Laravel Airlock, is a powerful tool for handling authentication in your Laravel applications. It is designed to make API authentication simple and secure, allowing you to build robust, stateless APIs with ease. In this tutorial, we will explore the key concepts and steps to implement Laravel Sanctum in your Laravel project.

What is Laravel Sanctum?

Laravel Sanctum is an official Laravel package that provides a simple and effective way to handle token-based authentication for your web and mobile applications. It is particularly useful when building Single Page Applications (SPAs) and mobile apps that need to communicate with a Laravel backend.

Key Features of Laravel Sanctum:

1. API Token Authentication: Sanctum offers a simple and secure way to issue API tokens to users, which can be used to authenticate API requests.
2. Stateless Authentication: Sanctum operates in a stateless manner, which means that it does not rely on cookies or sessions, making it ideal for modern web applications and mobile APIs.
3. API Throttling: You can easily implement rate limiting and request throttling for your API routes, preventing abuse or excessive usage.
4. SPA Authentication: Sanctum is designed to work seamlessly with single-page applications, making it an excellent choice for building modern, interactive web applications.

Getting Started with Laravel Sanctum

To get started with Laravel Sanctum, follow these steps:

Step 1: Laravel Installation If you haven’t already set up a Laravel project, you can create one using the Laravel installer:

 composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel project-name
 

Step 2: Install Laravel Sanctum Next, install Sanctum using Composer:

 composer require laravel/sanctum

Step 3: Configuration Publish the Sanctum configuration and migration files:

 php artisan vendor:publish --tag=sanctum-config
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=sanctum-migrations
php artisan migrate
 

Step 4: API Token Setup In your User model, add the HasApiTokens trait:

 use Laravel\Sanctum\HasApiTokens;
 

Step 5: Authentication Middleware Apply the auth:sanctum middleware to your API routes to secure them

 <span class="hljs-title class_">Route</span>::<span class="hljs-title function_ invoke__">middleware</span>(<span class="hljs-string">'auth:sanctum'</span>)-><span class="hljs-title function_ invoke__">group</span>(function () { <span class="hljs-comment">// Your API routes here</span> });

Step 6: Token Creation and Usage You can issue tokens for users and use them to authenticate API requests. For instance, you can generate a token for a user like this:

 $token = $user->createToken('token-name')->plainTextToken;
 

Conclusion

Laravel Sanctum simplifies API authentication, providing a secure and straightforward way to handle tokens in your Laravel applications. In this tutorial, we covered the fundamental concepts and steps to get started with Sanctum. As you explore this package further, you’ll discover more features and options to enhance the security and functionality of your API endpoints, making it a valuable tool in your Laravel development toolkit.