Laravel Sanctum
- Introduction
- Installation
- Configuration
- API Token Authentication
- SPA Authentication
- Mobile Application Authentication
- Testing
Introduction
Laravel Sanctum provides a featherweight authentication system for SPAs (single page applications), mobile applications, and simple, token based APIs. Sanctum allows each user of your application to generate multiple API tokens for their account. These tokens may be granted abilities / scopes which specify which actions the tokens are allowed to perform.
How it Works
Laravel Sanctum exists to solve two separate problems. Let's discuss each before digging deeper into the library.
API Tokens
First, Sanctum is a simple package you may use to issue API tokens to your users without the complication of OAuth. This feature is inspired by GitHub and other applications which issue "personal access tokens". For example, imagine the "account settings" of your application has a screen where a user may generate an API token for their account. You may use Sanctum to generate and manage those tokens. These tokens typically have a very long expiration time (years), but may be manually revoked by the user anytime.
Laravel Sanctum offers this feature by storing user API tokens in a single database table and authenticating incoming HTTP requests via the Authorization
header which should contain a valid API token.
SPA Authentication
Second, Sanctum exists to offer a simple way to authenticate single page applications (SPAs) that need to communicate with a Laravel powered API. These SPAs might exist in the same repository as your Laravel application or might be an entirely separate repository, such as an SPA created using Next.js or Nuxt.
For this feature, Sanctum does not use tokens of any kind. Instead, Sanctum uses Laravel's built-in cookie based session authentication services. Typically, Sanctum utilizes Laravel's web
authentication guard to accomplish this. This provides the benefits of CSRF protection, session authentication, as well as protects against leakage of the authentication credentials via XSS.
Sanctum will only attempt to authenticate using cookies when the incoming request originates from your own SPA frontend. When Sanctum examines an incoming HTTP request, it will first check for an authentication cookie and, if none is present, Sanctum will then examine the Authorization
header for a valid API token.
It is perfectly fine to use Sanctum only for API token authentication or only for SPA authentication. Just because you use Sanctum does not mean you are required to use both features it offers.
Installation
You may install Laravel Sanctum via the install:api
Artisan command:
php artisan install:api
Next, if you plan to utilize Sanctum to authenticate an SPA, please refer to the SPA Authentication section of this documentation.
Configuration
Overriding Default Models
Although not typically required, you are free to extend the PersonalAccessToken
model used internally by Sanctum:
use Laravel\Sanctum\PersonalAccessToken as SanctumPersonalAccessToken; class PersonalAccessToken extends SanctumPersonalAccessToken{ // ...}
Then, you may instruct Sanctum to use your custom model via the usePersonalAccessTokenModel
method provided by Sanctum. Typically, you should call this method in the boot
method of your application's AppServiceProvider
file:
use App\Models\Sanctum\PersonalAccessToken;use Laravel\Sanctum\Sanctum; /** * Bootstrap any application services. */public function boot(): void{ Sanctum::usePersonalAccessTokenModel(PersonalAccessToken::class);}
API Token Authentication
You should not use API tokens to authenticate your own first-party SPA. Instead, use Sanctum's built-in SPA authentication features.
Issuing API Tokens
Sanctum allows you to issue API tokens / personal access tokens that may be used to authenticate API requests to your application. When making requests using API tokens, the token should be included in the Authorization
header as a Bearer
token.
To begin issuing tokens for users, your User model should use the Laravel\Sanctum\HasApiTokens
trait:
use Laravel\Sanctum\HasApiTokens; class User extends Authenticatable{ use HasApiTokens, HasFactory, Notifiable;}
To issue a token, you may use the createToken
method. The createToken
method returns a Laravel\Sanctum\NewAccessToken
instance. API tokens are hashed using SHA-256 hashing before being stored in your database, but you may access the plain-text value of the token using the plainTextToken
property of the NewAccessToken
instance. You should display this value to the user immediately after the token has been created:
use Illuminate\Http\Request; Route::post('/tokens/create', function (Request $request) { $token = $request->user()->createToken($request->token_name); return ['token' => $token->plainTextToken];});
You may access all of the user's tokens using the tokens
Eloquent relationship provided by the HasApiTokens
trait:
foreach ($user->tokens as $token) { // ...}
Token Abilities
Sanctum allows you to assign "abilities" to tokens. Abilities serve a similar purpose as OAuth's "scopes". You may pass an array of string abilities as the second argument to the createToken
method:
return $user->createToken('token-name', ['server:update'])->plainTextToken;
When handling an incoming request authenticated by Sanctum, you may determine if the token has a given ability using the tokenCan
method:
if ($user->tokenCan('server:update')) { // ...}
Token Ability Middleware
Sanctum also includes two middleware that may be used to verify that an incoming request is authenticated with a token that has been granted a given ability. To get started, define the following middleware aliases in your application's bootstrap/app.php
file:
use Laravel\Sanctum\Http\Middleware\CheckAbilities;use Laravel\Sanctum\Http\Middleware\CheckForAnyAbility; ->withMiddleware(function (Middleware $middleware) { $middleware->alias([ 'abilities' => CheckAbilities::class, 'ability' => CheckForAnyAbility::class, ]);})
The abilities
middleware may be assigned to a route to verify that the incoming request's token has all of the listed abilities:
Route::get('/orders', function () { // Token has both "check-status" and "place-orders" abilities...})->middleware(['auth:sanctum', 'abilities:check-status,place-orders']);
The ability
middleware may be assigned to a route to verify that the incoming request's token has at least one of the listed abilities:
Route::get('/orders', function () { // Token has the "check-status" or "place-orders" ability...})->middleware(['auth:sanctum', 'ability:check-status,place-orders']);
First-Party UI Initiated Requests
For convenience, the tokenCan
method will always return true
if the incoming authenticated request was from your first-party SPA and you are using Sanctum's built-in SPA authentication.
However, this does not necessarily mean that your application has to allow the user to perform the action. Typically, your application's authorization policies will determine if the token has been granted the permission to perform the abilities as well as check that the user instance itself should be allowed to perform the action.
For example, if we imagine an application that manages servers, this might mean checking that the token is authorized to update servers and that the server belongs to the user:
return $request->user()->id === $server->user_id && $request->user()->tokenCan('server:update')
At first, allowing the tokenCan
method to be called and always return true
for first-party UI initiated requests may seem strange; however, it is convenient to be able to always assume an API token is available and can be inspected via the tokenCan
method. By taking this approach, you may always call the tokenCan
method within your application's authorization policies without worrying about whether the request was triggered from your application's UI or was initiated by one of your API's third-party consumers.
Protecting Routes
To protect routes so that all incoming requests must be authenticated, you should attach the sanctum
authentication guard to your protected routes within your routes/web.php
and routes/api.php
route files. This guard will ensure that incoming requests are authenticated as either stateful, cookie authenticated requests or contain a valid API token header if the request is from a third party.
You may be wondering why we suggest that you authenticate the routes within your application's routes/web.php
file using the sanctum
guard. Remember, Sanctum will first attempt to authenticate incoming requests using Laravel's typical session authentication cookie. If that cookie is not present then Sanctum will attempt to authenticate the request using a token in the request's Authorization
header. In addition, authenticating all requests using Sanctum ensures that we may always call the tokenCan
method on the currently authenticated user instance:
use Illuminate\Http\Request; Route::get('/user', function (Request $request) { return $request->user();})->middleware('auth:sanctum');
Revoking Tokens
You may "revoke" tokens by deleting them from your database using the tokens
relationship that is provided by the Laravel\Sanctum\HasApiTokens
trait:
// Revoke all tokens...$user->tokens()->delete(); // Revoke the token that was used to authenticate the current request...$request->user()->currentAccessToken()->delete(); // Revoke a specific token...$user->tokens()->where('id', $tokenId)->delete();
Token Expiration
By default, Sanctum tokens never expire and may only be invalidated by revoking the token. However, if you would like to configure an expiration time for your application's API tokens, you may do so via the expiration
configuration option defined in your application's sanctum
configuration file. This configuration option defines the number of minutes until an issued token will be considered expired:
'expiration' => 525600,
If you would like to specify the expiration time of each token independently, you may do so by providing the expiration time as the third argument to the createToken
method:
return $user->createToken( 'token-name', ['*'], now()->addWeek())->plainTextToken;
If you have configured a token expiration time for your application, you may also wish to schedule a task to prune your application's expired tokens. Thankfully, Sanctum includes a sanctum:prune-expired
Artisan command that you may use to accomplish this. For example, you may configure a scheduled task to delete all expired token database records that have been expired for at least 24 hours:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schedule; Schedule::command('sanctum:prune-expired --hours=24')->daily();
SPA Authentication
Sanctum also exists to provide a simple method of authenticating single page applications (SPAs) that need to communicate with a Laravel powered API. These SPAs might exist in the same repository as your Laravel application or might be an entirely separate repository.
For this feature, Sanctum does not use tokens of any kind. Instead, Sanctum uses Laravel's built-in cookie based session authentication services. This approach to authentication provides the benefits of CSRF protection, session authentication, as well as protects against leakage of the authentication credentials via XSS.
In order to authenticate, your SPA and API must share the same top-level domain. However, they may be placed on different subdomains. Additionally, you should ensure that you send the Accept: application/json
header and either the Referer
or Origin
header with your request.
Configuration
Configuring Your First-Party Domains
First, you should configure which domains your SPA will be making requests from. You may configure these domains using the stateful
configuration option in your sanctum
configuration file. This configuration setting determines which domains will maintain "stateful" authentication using Laravel session cookies when making requests to your API.
If you are accessing your application via a URL that includes a port (127.0.0.1:8000
), you should ensure that you include the port number with the domain.
Sanctum Middleware
Next, you should instruct Laravel that incoming requests from your SPA can authenticate using Laravel's session cookies, while still allowing requests from third parties or mobile applications to authenticate using API tokens. This can be easily accomplished by invoking the statefulApi
middleware method in your application's bootstrap/app.php
file:
->withMiddleware(function (Middleware $middleware) { $middleware->statefulApi();})
CORS and Cookies
If you are having trouble authenticating with your application from an SPA that executes on a separate subdomain, you have likely misconfigured your CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) or session cookie settings.
The config/cors.php
configuration file is not published by default. If you need to customize Laravel's CORS options, you should publish the complete cors
configuration file using the config:publish
Artisan command:
php artisan config:publish cors
Next, you should ensure that your application's CORS configuration is returning the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials
header with a value of True
. This may be accomplished by setting the supports_credentials
option within your application's config/cors.php
configuration file to true
.
In addition, you should enable the withCredentials
and withXSRFToken
options on your application's global axios
instance. Typically, this should be performed in your resources/js/bootstrap.js
file. If you are not using Axios to make HTTP requests from your frontend, you should perform the equivalent configuration on your own HTTP client:
axios.defaults.withCredentials = true;axios.defaults.withXSRFToken = true;
Finally, you should ensure your application's session cookie domain configuration supports any subdomain of your root domain. You may accomplish this by prefixing the domain with a leading .
within your application's config/session.php
configuration file:
'domain' => '.domain.com',
Authenticating
CSRF Protection
To authenticate your SPA, your SPA's "login" page should first make a request to the /sanctum/csrf-cookie
endpoint to initialize CSRF protection for the application:
axios.get('/sanctum/csrf-cookie').then(response => { // Login...});
During this request, Laravel will set an XSRF-TOKEN
cookie containing the current CSRF token. This token should then be passed in an X-XSRF-TOKEN
header on subsequent requests, which some HTTP client libraries like Axios and the Angular HttpClient will do automatically for you. If your JavaScript HTTP library does not set the value for you, you will need to manually set the X-XSRF-TOKEN
header to match the value of the XSRF-TOKEN
cookie that is set by this route.
Logging In
Once CSRF protection has been initialized, you should make a POST
request to your Laravel application's /login
route. This /login
route may be implemented manually or using a headless authentication package like Laravel Fortify.
If the login request is successful, you will be authenticated and subsequent requests to your application's routes will automatically be authenticated via the session cookie that the Laravel application issued to your client. In addition, since your application already made a request to the /sanctum/csrf-cookie
route, subsequent requests should automatically receive CSRF protection as long as your JavaScript HTTP client sends the value of the XSRF-TOKEN
cookie in the X-XSRF-TOKEN
header.
Of course, if your user's session expires due to lack of activity, subsequent requests to the Laravel application may receive a 401 or 419 HTTP error response. In this case, you should redirect the user to your SPA's login page.
You are free to write your own /login
endpoint; however, you should ensure that it authenticates the user using the standard, session based authentication services that Laravel provides. Typically, this means using the web
authentication guard.
Protecting Routes
To protect routes so that all incoming requests must be authenticated, you should attach the sanctum
authentication guard to your API routes within your routes/api.php
file. This guard will ensure that incoming requests are authenticated as either stateful authenticated requests from your SPA or contain a valid API token header if the request is from a third party:
use Illuminate\Http\Request; Route::get('/user', function (Request $request) { return $request->user();})->middleware('auth:sanctum');
Authorizing Private Broadcast Channels
If your SPA needs to authenticate with private / presence broadcast channels, you should remove the channels
entry from the withRouting
method contained in your application's bootstrap/app.php
file. Instead, you should invoke the withBroadcasting
method so that you may specify the correct middleware for your application's broadcasting routes:
return Application::configure(basePath: dirname(__DIR__)) ->withRouting( web: __DIR__.'/../routes/web.php', // ... ) ->withBroadcasting( __DIR__.'/../routes/channels.php', ['prefix' => 'api', 'middleware' => ['api', 'auth:sanctum']], )
Next, in order for Pusher's authorization requests to succeed, you will need to provide a custom Pusher authorizer
when initializing Laravel Echo. This allows your application to configure Pusher to use the axios
instance that is properly configured for cross-domain requests:
window.Echo = new Echo({ broadcaster: "pusher", cluster: import.meta.env.VITE_PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER, encrypted: true, key: import.meta.env.VITE_PUSHER_APP_KEY, authorizer: (channel, options) => { return { authorize: (socketId, callback) => { axios.post('/api/broadcasting/auth', { socket_id: socketId, channel_name: channel.name }) .then(response => { callback(false, response.data); }) .catch(error => { callback(true, error); }); } }; },})
Mobile Application Authentication
You may also use Sanctum tokens to authenticate your mobile application's requests to your API. The process for authenticating mobile application requests is similar to authenticating third-party API requests; however, there are small differences in how you will issue the API tokens.
Issuing API Tokens
To get started, create a route that accepts the user's email / username, password, and device name, then exchanges those credentials for a new Sanctum token. The "device name" given to this endpoint is for informational purposes and may be any value you wish. In general, the device name value should be a name the user would recognize, such as "Nuno's iPhone 12".
Typically, you will make a request to the token endpoint from your mobile application's "login" screen. The endpoint will return the plain-text API token which may then be stored on the mobile device and used to make additional API requests:
use App\Models\User;use Illuminate\Http\Request;use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Hash;use Illuminate\Validation\ValidationException; Route::post('/sanctum/token', function (Request $request) { $request->validate([ 'email' => 'required|email', 'password' => 'required', 'device_name' => 'required', ]); $user = User::where('email', $request->email)->first(); if (! $user || ! Hash::check($request->password, $user->password)) { throw ValidationException::withMessages([ 'email' => ['The provided credentials are incorrect.'], ]); } return $user->createToken($request->device_name)->plainTextToken;});
When the mobile application uses the token to make an API request to your application, it should pass the token in the Authorization
header as a Bearer
token.
When issuing tokens for a mobile application, you are also free to specify token abilities.
Protecting Routes
As previously documented, you may protect routes so that all incoming requests must be authenticated by attaching the sanctum
authentication guard to the routes:
Route::get('/user', function (Request $request) { return $request->user();})->middleware('auth:sanctum');
Revoking Tokens
To allow users to revoke API tokens issued to mobile devices, you may list them by name, along with a "Revoke" button, within an "account settings" portion of your web application's UI. When the user clicks the "Revoke" button, you can delete the token from the database. Remember, you can access a user's API tokens via the tokens
relationship provided by the Laravel\Sanctum\HasApiTokens
trait:
// Revoke all tokens...$user->tokens()->delete(); // Revoke a specific token...$user->tokens()->where('id', $tokenId)->delete();
Testing
While testing, the Sanctum::actingAs
method may be used to authenticate a user and specify which abilities should be granted to their token:
use App\Models\User;use Laravel\Sanctum\Sanctum; test('task list can be retrieved', function () { Sanctum::actingAs( User::factory()->create(), ['view-tasks'] ); $response = $this->get('/api/task'); $response->assertOk();});
use App\Models\User;use Laravel\Sanctum\Sanctum; public function test_task_list_can_be_retrieved(): void{ Sanctum::actingAs( User::factory()->create(), ['view-tasks'] ); $response = $this->get('/api/task'); $response->assertOk();}
If you would like to grant all abilities to the token, you should include *
in the ability list provided to the actingAs
method:
Sanctum::actingAs( User::factory()->create(), ['*']);