laravel 4 - Authentication with 2 different tables

Question

I need to create a new "auth" config with another table and users. I have one table for the "admin" users and another table for the normal users.

But how can I create another instance of Auth with a different configuration?

Answer 1

While trying to solve this problem myself, I found a much simpler way. I basically created a custom ServiceProvider to replace the default Auth one, which serves as a factory class for Auth, and allows you to have multiple instances for multiple login types. I also stuck it all in a package which can be found here: https://github.com/ollieread/multiauth

It's pretty easy to use really, just replace the AuthServiceProvider in app/config/app.php with OlliereadMultiauthMultiauthServiceProvider, then change app/config/auth.php to look something like this:

return array(

    'multi' => array(
        'account' => array(
            'driver' => 'eloquent',
            'model' => 'Account'
        ),
        'user' => array(
            'driver' => 'database',
            'table' => 'users'
        )
    ),

    'reminder' => array(

        'email' => 'emails.auth.reminder',

        'table' => 'password_reminders',

        'expire' => 60,

    ),

);

Now you can just use Auth the same way as before, but with one slight difference:

Auth::account()->attempt(array(
    'email'     => $attributes['email'],
    'password'  => $attributes['password'],
));
Auth::user()->attempt(array(
    'email'     => $attributes['email'],
    'password'  => $attributes['password'],
));
Auth::account()->check();
Auth::user()->check();

It also allows you to be logged in as multiple user types simultaneously which was a requirement for a project I was working on. Hope it helps someone other than me.

UPDATE - 27/02/2014

For those of you that are just coming across this answer, I've just recently added support for reminders, which can be accessed in the same factory style way.