Authentication

Login, the easy way

Building login by hand in raw PHP was a lot of work (sessions, hashing). Laravel gives you complete, secure authentication via a starter kit — registration, login, password reset, all built.

composer require laravel/breeze --dev
php artisan breeze:install
php artisan migrate
# You now have full register/login/logout pages!

Those three commands give you a complete login system. composer require laravel/breeze --dev downloads the Breeze starter kit. php artisan breeze:install generates the register, login, logout and password-reset pages plus their routes and controllers. php artisan migrate creates the users table those pages need. After this you genuinely have working sign-up and sign-in screens — without writing the auth code yourself.

Once users can log in, you often need the current user. Laravel gives you a helper for that, both in PHP and in Blade:

// the logged-in user, anywhere
$user = auth()->user();
echo $user->name;

// in Blade
@auth
  <p>Welcome, {{ auth()->user()->name }}</p>
@endauth

auth()->user() returns the person who is currently logged in (or null if nobody is), so $user->name prints their name. In Blade, the @auth ... @endauth block shows its contents only when someone is logged in — handy for a "Welcome, Asha" greeting that hides itself for guests.

How authentication works once a starter kit is installed:

1. Install a starter kit (Breeze) and run php artisan migrate to create the users table.
2. A visitor registers — Laravel securely hashes their password and stores the new user.
3. They log in — Laravel checks the password and starts a session that remembers them.
4. Protect private pages with the auth middleware so only logged-in users can reach them.
5. Anywhere in your app, read the current user with auth()->user() (or @auth in Blade).