Laravel 5.1 multiple authentication

Question

How can you authenticate multiple types of users in Laravel 5.1 e.g. Jobseeker, Recruiter, Admin etc.

Some of you have suggested using a single users table to store

Answer 1

This is not a solution to your question directly, but alternative way to solve your question problem with.

In stead of creating different username and password for different groups, make a central authentication that has roles. It called user and roles.

You can define groups with different roles, and each roles has specific access to respective area.

Regarding registration process you can make two differnet views but using the same controller, and for each view you can create a hidden field to indicate if it is jobseekers group or recruiter group.

Both will receive two different confirmation emails where they should fill the rest of the profile information, like recruiter should put company name and jobseeker should put his name etc. they might have two different tables for profile information, but still using the same login system.

By adding condition to middleware and correct route, if jobseeker tries to access recruiter area even if jobseeker is logged in the system, the jobseeker won't be able to access that area or the opposite way.

Since Laravel 5.1 has build in user login system, so you have few choices, build your own roles or use 3rd party.

I suggest you to build your own so you have control over your code and can further develop it as you wish with time. It might take you half day to get it run and understand how it works, but it is worth spending that time with the right approach in stead of the way you go in your Question OR using 3rd party is fine too, there is a lot of packages around you can search for. I have personally used Entrust (https://github.com/Zizaco/entrust) it is easy and nice way to provide roles and permissions to your project.

Here is also a link to video developed by Jeffrey Way at Laracast, it builds user and roles system from scratch for Laravel 4. but since you have user part, just follow roles part and with small modifications you will have a roles system to your Laravel 5.1, I have tried it and it works.

Regarding your question in the comments, when you follow the video you will understand the concept.

Link to the video: https://laracasts.com/lessons/users-and-roles

You might need to create account to see the video, most of videos are free.

Good practice It is always also a good practice to illustrate what you want to achieve that makes things easier, I have just made an example for your project, but that is only example for learning:

I encourage you to read some of the topics regarding roles, here you will also find some inspiration to 3rd party acl systems to Laravel, there might be more articles but here is some:

Reading:
https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/laravel/which-package-is-best-for-roles-permissions/?page=2
https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/laravel-5-user-groups-management
https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/roles-and-permissions-in-laravel-5

---

EDIT

Important Note
Laravel 5.1 has introduced Authorization, I have not found much documentation online yet but it is worth to spend some time learning it:

http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/authorization#policies

NEW UPDATE
There are some great videos solution for what you asking, follow ACL parts here https://laracasts.com/series/whats-new-in-laravel-5-1

This might be very interesting too: https://laracasts.com/lessons/email-verification-in-laravel

This will give you a complete own developed solution.