New in Symfony 6.2: Security Improvements (Part 1)

Simpler Programmatic Login

Contributed by
Arnaud Frézet and Robin Chalas
in #41274.

Logging in users programmatically is a common need in many applications. That's why in Symfony 6.2 we're adding a login() method to the Security service. On any service or controller, you can now do this:

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use Symfony\Bundle\SecurityBundle\Security;
// ...

class SomeService
{
    public function __construct(
        private Security $security,
    ) {
    }

    public function someMethod()
    {
        // fetch a UserInterface object somehow (e.g. from a database)
        $user = ...

        // login the user programmatically
        $this->security->login($user);

        // if you have many authenticators associated to the current firewall,
        // you must pass explicitly the name of authenticator to use
        $this->security->login($user, 'form_login');
        $this->security->login($user, SomeApiKeyAuthenticator::class);

        // ...
    }
}

Custom Target URL When Impersonating Users

Contributed by
Antoine Makdessi
in #46338.

Similar to the feature that allows to configure the target URL after login, in Symfony 6.2 we're adding a new feature to allow you configure the target URL after impersonating a user. To do so, define the new target_route option under the switch_user option of your firewall:

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# config/packages/security.yaml
security:
    # ...

    firewalls:
        main:
            # ...
            switch_user:
                # ...
                target_route: 'app_user_dashboard'

Custom Lifetime for Login Links

Contributed by
Mathias Brodala
in #46567.

When using login links to implement passwordless authentication, the lifetime of those links is configured globally for all. In Symfony 6.2 we're adding a feature so you can configure the lifetime per link. Use the third optional argument of createLoginLink() to override the global lifetime with a new custom value (in seconds):

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// this login link will have a lifetime of 60 seconds
$loginLinkDetails = $loginLinkHandler->createLoginLink($user, null, 60);
$loginLink = $loginLinkDetails->getUrl();

Multiple User Checkers per Firewall

Contributed by
Michael Babker
in #46064.

User checkers allow you to define additional checks performed during the authentication of a user, to verify if the identified user is allowed to log in. You can only apply one user checker per firewall, which makes it harder to share logic.

Imagine an application that has two firewalls (e.g. API and traditional web login) and needs to apply these checkers: for both firewalls, check that the user account is not disabled; for the API firewall, check also that user has API access.

In Symfony 6.2 we're introducing a new "chained user checker" feature so you can call multiple user checkers for a firewall. To do so, apply to each user checker the tags corresponding to the firewall where it applies (tags follow the pattern security.user_checker.<firewall name>).

In Symfony 6.2, the previous example can be solved as follows:

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namespace App\Security\User;

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Attribute\AutoconfigureTag;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserCheckerInterface;

#[AutoconfigureTag('security.user_checker.main', ['priority' => 10])]
#[AutoconfigureTag('security.user_checker.api', ['priority' => 10])]
final class DisabledAccountUserChecker implements UserCheckerInterface
{
    // ...
}

#[AutoconfigureTag('security.user_checker.api', ['priority' => 5])]
final class ApiAccessAllowedUserChecker implements UserCheckerInterface
{
    // ...
}