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Creating RESTful APIs with safe authentication is a must for modern online applications. Laravel, a sophisticated PHP framework, provides a strong solution for developing RESTful APIs with Passport authentication, making it easy to create secure and user-friendly APIs.

We will walk you through the process of creating RESTful APIs with Passport authentication in Laravel 10, allowing you to construct APIs that can securely authenticate and authorise users.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have the skills and expertise to design secure and user-friendly RESTful APIs in Laravel 10, ensuring that your APIs are both functional and secure.

Video course: Looking for Complete Course of RESTful APIs in Laravel 10?

We’ll create APIs for these,

User Register API
Login API
Profile API
Logout API

Let’s get started.

What is Passport Authentication?

Passport is a Laravel package that provides a comprehensive OAuth2 server implementation for enabling API authentication in Laravel applications.

It makes it easier to authenticate users and clients in your application while complying to the OAuth2 protocol, making it an effective tool for securing API endpoints.

Laravel Installation

Open terminal and run this command to create a laravel project.

composer create-project laravel/laravel myblog

It will create a project folder with name myblog inside your local system.

To start the development server of laravel –

php artisan serve

URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000

Assuming laravel already installed inside your system.

Create Database & Connect

To create a database, either we can create via Manual tool of PhpMyadmin or by means of a mysql command.

CREATE DATABASE laravel_app;

To connect database with application, Open .env file from application root. Search for DB_ and update your details.

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel_app
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=root

How To Setup Passport Authentication in Laravel?

You need to follow few steps to do a successful installation of Passport package in laravel,

Step #1

Run composer command,

composer require laravel/passport

Step #2

Above command also generates few migrations of passport.

Run migration,

php artisan migrate

Step #3

Generate personal access oauth tokens,

php artisan passport:install

Step #4

Open auth.php file from /config folder.

Search for “guards“. Add these lines of code into it,

'guards' => [
    //...
    'api' => [
        'driver' => 'passport',
        'provider' => 'users',
    ],
],

And also search for “providers“. Code should be like this,

'providers' => [
    'users' => [
        'driver' => 'eloquent',
        'model' => App\Models\User::class,
    ],
]

Step #5

Update User.php model class file of /app/Models folder.

Here, is the complete updated code.

<?php

namespace App\Models;

// use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\MustVerifyEmail;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Laravel\Passport\HasApiTokens;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasApiTokens, HasFactory, Notifiable;

    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var array<int, string>
     */
    protected $fillable = [
        'name',
        'email',
        'password',
    ];

    /**
     * The attributes that should be hidden for serialization.
     *
     * @var array<int, string>
     */
    protected $hidden = [
        'password',
        'remember_token',
    ];

    /**
     * The attributes that should be cast.
     *
     * @var array<string, string>
     */
    protected $casts = [
        'email_verified_at' => 'datetime',
        'password' => 'hashed',
    ];
}

Successfully, you have setup Passport auth package into application.

Now, you have a middleware which you can use to protect api routes i.e “auth:api”.

API Controller Settings

Run this command to create API controller class,

php artisan make:controller Api/ApiController

It will create a file named ApiController.php inside /app/Http/Controllers folder.

Open file and write this complete code into it,

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers\Api;

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Hash;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;

class ApiController extends Controller
{
    // Register API (POST, formdata)
    public function register(Request $request){

        // data validation
        $request->validate([
            "name" => "required",
            "email" => "required|email|unique:users",
            "password" => "required|confirmed"
        ]);

        // Author model
        User::create([
            "name" => $request->name,
            "email" => $request->email,
            "password" => Hash::make($request->password)
        ]);

        // Response
        return response()->json([
            "status" => true,
            "message" => "User created successfully"
        ]);
    }

    // Login API (POST, formdata)
    public function login(Request $request){

        // Data validation
        $request->validate([
            "email" => "required|email",
            "password" => "required"
        ]);

        // Auth Facade
        if(Auth::attempt([
            "email" => $request->email,
            "password" => $request->password
        ])){

            $user = Auth::user();

            $token = $user->createToken("myToken")->accessToken;

            return response()->json([
                "status" => true,
                "message" => "Login successful",
                "access_token" => $token
            ]);
        }

        return response()->json([
            "status" => false,
            "message" => "Invalid credentials"
        ]);
    }

    // Profile API (GET)
    public function profile(){
        
        $userdata = Auth::user();

        return response()->json([
            "status" => true,
            "message" => "Profile data",
            "data" => $userdata
        ]);
    }

    // Logout API (GET)
    public function logout(){

        auth()->user()->token()->revoke();

        return response()->json([
            "status" => true,
            "message" => "User logged out"
        ]);
    }
}

ApiController class contains the api methods for,

Register
Login
Profile
Logout

Setup API Routes

Open api.php file from /routes folder. Add these routes into it,

//...
use App\Http\Controllers\Api\ApiController;

Route::post("register", [ApiController::class, "register"]);
Route::post("login", [ApiController::class, "login"]);

Route::group([
    "middleware" => ["auth:api"]
], function(){

    Route::get("profile", [ApiController::class, "profile"]);
    Route::get("logout", [ApiController::class, "logout"]);
});

Application Testing

Run this command into project terminal to start development server,

php artisan serve

Register API

URL – http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/register

Method – POST

Header –

Accept:application/json

Form data –

{
   "name": "Sanjay Kumar",
   "email": "sanjay.example@example.net",
   "password": 12345678
   "password_confirmation": 12345678
}

Screenshot –

Login API

URL – http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/login

Method – POST

Header –

Accept:application/json

Form data –

{
   "email": "sanjay.example@example.net",
   "password": 12345678
}

Screenshot –

Profile API

URL – http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/profile

Method – GET

Header –

Accept:application/json
Authorization:Bearer <token>

Screenshot –

Logout API

URL – http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/logout

Method – GET

Header –

Accept:application/json
Authorization:Bearer <token>

That’s it.

We hope this article helped you to learn about Laravel 10 RESTful APIs with Passport Authentication Tutorial in a very detailed way.

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