Laravel doesn't change user model on the go - php

Question

I am using Laravel 4 for my app.
In this app I've got two auth models: Buyers and Users. I don't wont to use User->type field, because this models have absolutely different logic.
Here's my login Controller:
public function postIndex()
{
if (Auth::attempt(array_only(Input::get(), array('email', 'password')), array_only(Input::get(), array('save')))) {
Login::create(array('user_id' => Auth::user()->id, 'session_id' => session_id())); // Создаем новую запись логина вместе с session_id.
return Redirect::to('/');
}
return $this->userauth();
}
public function userauth() {
Config::set('auth.model', 'User');
Config::set('auth.table', 'users');
$test = Config::get('auth.model');
if (Auth::attempt(array_only(Input::get(), array('email', 'password')), array_only(Input::get(), array('save')))) {
Login::create(array('user_id' => Auth::user()->id, 'session_id' => session_id())); // Создаем новую запись логина вместе с session_id.
return Redirect::to('/');
}
Session::flash('error', 'Auth not excepted. '. implode(' ', array_only(Input::get(), array('email', 'password'))));
return Redirect::to('logins')->withInput(Input::except('password'));
}
I've already changed settings in auth.php to work with buyers. When I'm typing login and password for buyer, everything works great. It seems, that after Auth::attempted() it doesn't change settings. It looks like I have to reload Auth object. Can somebody help me?
Buy the way, if I write like this:
public function postIndex()
{
Config::set('auth.model', 'User');
Config::set('auth.table', 'users');
$test = Config::get('auth.model');
if (Auth::attempt(array_only(Input::get(), array('email', 'password')), array_only(Input::get(), array('save')))) {
Login::create(array('user_id' => Auth::user()->id, 'session_id' => session_id())); // Создаем новую запись логина вместе с session_id.
return Redirect::to('/');
}
Session::flash('error', 'Auth not excepted. '. implode(' ', array_only(Input::get(), array('email', 'password'))));
return Redirect::to('logins')->withInput(Input::except('password'));
}
everything works great too.

Answer 1

Short Answer:
You're right. After the first call to Auth::attempt() changes to the config have no effect. During runtime, you have to use Auth::setProvider() to set the model which will be used.
Long Answer:
I don't know how well this will work in your particular setup, but I found your question while trying to do something similar, so I'll show you how I ended up doing it.
In my case, the requirement wasn't simply to have two different types of users. I'm running two websites on separate domains from the same codebase, one for students and one for host families. I have a Student class that will replace User on the one site and Host for the same purpose on the other. Both implement UserInterface and RemindableInterface, so we're good there.
In app/filters.php, I create two special filters:
Route::filter('prep.student', function() {
Auth::setProvider(new Illuminate\Auth\EloquentUserProvider(App::make('hash'), 'Student'));
});
Route::filter('prep.host', function() {
Auth::setProvider(new Illuminate\Auth\EloquentUserProvider(App::make('hash'), 'Host'));
});
Here "Host" and "Student" are the class names you want the Eloquent authentication driver to use.
In app/routes.php, I put my routes into two groups, and on each group I used the proper filter above:
/**
* Routes for Students
*/
Route::group(array('domain' => '[student domain]', 'before' => 'prep.student'), function() {
Route::get('test', function() {
return View::make('student/test');
});
...
});
/**
* Routes for Hosts
*/
Route::group(array('domain' => '[host domain'], 'before' => 'prep.host'), function() {
Route::get('test', function() {
return View::make('host/test');
});
...
});
The result is that the user provider is set with the proper model for each group of routes. You could probably also set the provider in app/start/global.php, but I decided to keep it with routing so that it's very clear that the two groups of routes are for two different domains and have two different authentication models.
I would do this a bit differently were I building it new, but the two websites are the frontend of a large legacy codebase for which I can't significantly alter the database, so I freely admit this is a bit of a hack. If you're not in such a situation, a better solution might be to have a User class for authentication, and then attach that to the two other models you need.