How can I extend class Confide in Laravel 4? - php

Question

I want to extend/overwrite the method logAttempt in class Confide (Confide on GitHub) in order to execute some extra code whenever someone logs in successfully. This would be cleaner than copying the same code to all controllers where logAttempt is called.
I read through the Laravel documentation and several answers here on stackoverflow, but I just can't get it working.
I created a new folder app/extensions with a file named Confide.php:
<?php
namespace Extensions;
class Confide extends \Zizaco\Confide\Confide {
public function __construct(ConfideRepository $repo) {
die('no way!');
$this->repo = $repo;
$this->app = app();
}
public function logAttempt($credentials, $confirmed_only = false, $identity_columns = array()) {
die('yeah man!');
}
}
I added the directory to my app/start/global.php:
ClassLoader::addDirectories(array(
// ...
app_path().'/extensions',
));
I also added it to composer.json and ran composer dump-autoload:
"autoload": {
"classmap": [
...,
"app/extensions"
]
},
My own Confide class seems not to be loaded at all, because Confide works as normal – without ever die()-ing.
And if I use \Extensions\Confide::logAttempt($input, true); in my controller including the namespace, I get this ErrorException:
Non-static method Extensions\Confide::logAttempt() should not be called statically, assuming $this from incompatible context
Do I really need my own ConfideServiceProvider class as well? I tried that, too, but I'm not sure at all what to put in there to make Confide use my extended class.
Is there no simple way to extend a tiny bit of a class? There must be, I'm just missing something here.

Answer 1

If you are looking to execute some code when a user logs in, you should just listen for that event. In this case, I believe Confide uses the Auth class to login, so you should be able to listen for that event.
Event::listen('auth.login', function($user)
{
$user->last_login = new DateTime;
$user->save();
});
I find this much easier and cleaner than worrying about extending classes.

Answer 2

EDIT: Made a mistake
I think you need to call the method like this:
\Extensions\Confide->logAttempt($input, true);
because you are using:
\Extensions\Confide::logAttempt($input, true);
Which is how you call static methods.

Answer 3

I think I finally figured it out.
I had to extend ConfideServiceProvider as well like so:
<?php
namespace Extensions;
class ConfideServiceProvider extends \Zizaco\Confide\ConfideServiceProvider {
/**
* Bootstrap the service provider.
*
* #return void
*/
public function boot() {
$this->package('extensions/confide');
}
/**
* Register the application bindings.
*
* #return void
*/
protected function registerConfide() {
$this->app->bind('confide', function($app) {
return new Confide($app->make('confide.repository'));
});
}
}
The code above goes into app/extensions/ConfideServiceProvider.php. Note: In boot() I replaced "zizaco" with "extensions" and in registerConfide() I made no changes at all, but if this method is not present in the extended class, the original class will be used. I've got no idea why.
Then in app/config/app.php I replaced Zizaco\Confide\ConfideServiceProvider with Extensions\ConfideServiceProvider.
My own extended Confide class looks like this now:
<?php
namespace Extensions;
class Confide extends \Zizaco\Confide\Confide {
public function logAttempt($credentials, $confirmed_only = false, $identity_columns = array()) {
$result = parent::logAttempt($credentials, $confirmed_only, $identity_columns);
if ($result) {
// Login successful. Do some additional stuff.
\Log::info('User ' . \Auth::user()->username . ' logged in.');
}
return $result;
}
}
Note: If you want to use any other standard Laravel class like Log, Session etc., prefix it with one backslash as shown in the example above, or add a use operator for each class you use (e.g. use \Log;).