Laravel modify Auth::user() query?

Question

I want to add some joins onto my Auth::user() query. How do I do this without creating a brand new query? I just want to be able to make the default call of Auth::user() different than:

    SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `id` = ?

to

    SELECT * FROM users INNER JOIN user_icons ON user_icons.ID = users.iconid WHERE `id` = ? 

I'm using the default model User class.

Answer 1

Laravel provides a way for you to extend the Auth functionality. First, you need to create a class that implements the Illuminate\Auth\UserProviderInterface. Once you have your class, you call Auth::extend() to configure Auth with your new class.

For your case, the easiest thing for you to do would be to create a class that extends Illuminate\Auth\EloquentUserProvider. You'll want to update the retrieveBy* methods to add in your custom joins. For example:

class MyEloquentUserProvider extends Illuminate\Auth\EloquentUserProvider {
    public function retrieveById($identifier) {
        return $this->createModel()->newQuery()->join(/*join params here*/)->find($identifier);
    }
    public function retrieveByToken($identifier, $token) {
        // your code with join added here
    }
    public function retrieveByCredentials(array $credentials)
        // your code with join added here
    }
}

Once your class is fleshed out, you need to tell Auth to use it:

Auth::extend('eloquent', function($app) {
    return new MyEloquentUserProvider($app['hash'], $app['config']['auth.model']);
});

The first parameter to the Auth::extend method is the name of the auth driver being used as defined in app/config/auth.php. If you want, you can create a new driver (e.g. 'myeloquent'), but you'd need to update your Auth::extend statement and your app/config/auth.php driver.

Once all this is done, Auth::user() will end up calling your MyEloquentUserProvider::retrieveById method.

Fair warning: I have not actually done this myself, and none of this is personally tested. You will probably want to check out the documentation (L4.1 docs, L4.2 docs) and look at the Laravel code.

Other notes:

• People have already chimed in that this is probably not what you want to do. However, the this information may be helpful to you and others looking to extend Auth for some other reason.
• Considering your inner join, if a user does not have an associated user_icons record, Auth::user() will not return a record anymore, and the user probably won't be able to log in at all.

Answer 2

If you have 1:n relation:

Add a "icons" table to you database with a foreign key "user_id".

Add a "Icon" Model to your models.

<?php

class Icon extends Eloquent{

  ...

}
?>

In Model Class "User" add a function:

public function icons() {
    return $this->hasMany('Icon');
}

Now you can do this:

$userIcons = Auth::user()->icons();