Laravel 5.3 Passport JWT Authentication

So, finally I am answering my own question. Hopefully this will help someone facing the similar problem.

JWT authentication can be done using Laravel 5.3 passport, just follow the following steps:

• Install Passport normally as described in this link https://laravel.com/docs/master/passport#installation

OR follow these steps:

• composer require laravel/passport
• add Laravel\Passport\PassportServiceProvider::class, to your app providers
• php artisan migrate
• php artisan passport:install
• Add HasApiTokens trait to your user model
• Passport::routes(); in AppServiceProvider
• Configure api driver to passport

Once done, create a UserController and add the following methods in it:

public function auth(Request $request)
{

  $params = $request->only('email', 'password');

  $username = $params['email'];
  $password = $params['password'];

  if(\Auth::attempt(['email' => $username, 'password' => $password])){
    return \Auth::user()->createToken('my_user', []);
  }

  return response()->json(['error' => 'Invalid username or Password']);
}

  public function index(Request $request)
  {
    return $request->user();
  }

In routes/api.php, add the following routes:

Route::post('auth', 'UserController@auth');

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

  Route::resource('user', 'UserController@index');

});

Now make a POST request to http://localhost:8000/auth with the email address and password as shown in the screenshot (http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1483094937.png) This will get you the accessToken, you can use this token to make other requests in your application with the Authorization header and Bearer XXX where xxx is the accessToken you received from /api/auth endpoint.

Now, make a GET request to /api/user with the Authorization header and the token value, this will return the authenticated user's details. (eg: http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1483095018.png)

I have also posted these steps on my blog at http://chatterjee.pw/larvel-passport-jwt-authentication/

I hope this helps!

If you are not interested in OAuth and Client thing, you probably want to use pure JWT authentication, if so, you can check out this package:

https://github.com/miladrahimi/larajwt

It declares a new authentication driver named "jwt" to protect your authenticated routes, it provides a service to generate jwt from your users, and some other tools like logout, user model caching, filters for checking extra properties of users and so on.