Build a Multi-Auth Login System with Laravel

So you’re building a web application like a real estate project that requires different types of users .eg agents, admin, users to login using the same login page but they should be redirect to different dashboards? Look no further.Dive withe me into this guide to see how to do exactly that using Laravel 10

Lets install a fresh Laravel project by running the following command

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel realestate

Change your current directory to the project location

cd realestate

To make work easier, we will be using breeze package for authentication so run each of the following commands which install the package and publish it in addition to compiling your applications front end assets

composer require laravel/breeze --dev

php artisan breeze:install

npm install 

npm run dev

You will notice we have not migrated our database yet as we need to update our user’s migration file to add a role column which will be used in authentication. Open users migration file and add the following column

$table->enum('role',['admin','agent','user'])->default('user');

What the above line does is that it declares our user types to be 3 .i.e a user can be either an admin or an agent or a normal user. This can be changed to match your requirements and it sets the user type to ‘user’ if no role has been submitted during user registration.

Update your database information in .env file

DB_DATABASE=your-database-name
DB_USERNAME=your-database-user
DB_PASSWORD=your-database-password

Before we perform migration, we need to submit a few test data so we will create a users table seeder having the 3 different types of user

php artisan make:seeder UsersTableSeeder

Add the dummy data as indicated below according to your different user types

<?php

namespace Database\Seeders;

use Illuminate\Database\Console\Seeds\WithoutModelEvents;
use Illuminate\Database\Seeder;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Hash;

class UsersTableSeeder extends Seeder
{
    /**
     * Run the database seeds.
     */
    public function run(): void
    {
        DB::table('users')->insert([
            //admin
            [
                'name' =>  'Admin',
                'email' => 'admin@gmail.com',
                'password' => Hash::make('password'),
                'role' => 'admin',
            ],

            //agent
            [
                'name' =>  'Agent',
                'email' => 'agent@gmail.com',
                'password' => Hash::make('password'),
                'role' => 'agent',
            ],

            //user
            [
                'name' =>  'User',
                'email' => 'user@gmail.com',
                'password' => Hash::make('password'),
                'role' => 'user',
            ]
        ]);
    }
}

Update the database seeders file and add this line inside the run method

 $this->call(UsersTableSeeder::class);

You can now migrate your database and seed your data using the following command

php artisan migrate:fresh --seed

Start your server and navigate to your localhost:8000 and try to login using the above details you used in your seeder file. It should be logging in successfully.

This brings us to the next milestone. All the three user types are able to login, but they are being redirected to the same dashboard upon login. Let’s change that by creating new routes,controllers for both the admin and agent users

php artisan make:controller AdminController

php artisan make:controller AgentController

Create routes to their different dashboards in the web.php routes file

Route::get('/admin/dashboard',[AdminController::class,'dashboard')->name('admin.dashboard');

Route::get('/agent/dashboard',[AgentController::class,'dashboard')->name('agent.dashboard');

Update the AdminController.php to add method

public function dashboard(){
  return view('admin.dashboard');
}

Also, update the AgentController.php to add a similar method

public function dashboard(){
  return view('agent.dashboard');
}

Create the dashboard files for admin and agent insider the views folder (resources/views/admin/dashboard.blade.php) for admin and for agent (resources/views/agent/dashboard.blade.php). This can be having plain html content for the time being as below

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
    <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Admin Dashboard</h1>
</body>
</html>

Update the authenticated session controller in (app/Http/Controllers/Auth/AuthenticatedSessionController) to include the following redirection logic so that a user type is redirected to a specific dashboard upon login

public function store(LoginRequest $request): RedirectResponse
    {
        $request->authenticate();

        $request->session()->regenerate();
        
        $url = "";
        if($request->user()->role === "admin"){
            $url = "admin/dashboard";
        }elseif($request->user()->role === "agent"){
            $url = "agent/dashboard";
        }else{
            $url = "dashboard";  
        }

        return redirect()->intended($url);
    }

As per now, upon login a user is redirected to their respective dashboard .eg /agent/dashboard if the user is an agent . But if you change and replace the above url with /admin/dashboard the agent will still be able to access the admin route without being an admin because our routes have not been protected. Lets do that below using a middleware that we will create called Role.

php artisan make:middleware Role

Register the middleware in Kernel.php (located in app/Http) under the middleware aliases array

'role' => \App\Http\Middleware\Role::class,

In the Role middleware file, update to include the following code: this will redirect a user to the dashboard URL if their role doesn't match the allowed roles for the URL they are trying to access

public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next, $role): Response
    {
        if($request->user()->role !== $role){
            return redirect('dashboard');
        }
        return $next($request);
    }

We will now update the routes file(routes/web.php) to enforce the middleware we have created in specific routes

//admin routes
Route::middleware(['auth','role:admin'])->group(function () {
    Route::get('/admin/dashboard',[AdminController::class,'dashboard'])->name('admin.dashboard');
});


//agent routes
Route::middleware(['auth','role:agent'])->group(function () {
    Route::get('/agent/dashboard',[AgentController::class,'dashboard'])->name('agent.dashboard');
});

If you login as an agent and try accessing the admin dashboard, you will be redirected to user’s dashboard URL instead of accessing the admin URL.(as you don’t have permissions)

You can proceed to update the dashboard files to include nicer layouts and contents. Happy Coding!!