How to generate a JWT json web token in symfony framework.

Details



JWT or Json Web Tokens are becoming the standard for Authentication in Http REST Api calls. In Symfony we have the lexik/jwt-authentication-bundle available as a package that allow us to manage jwt in a very easy way.

Step 1. Install the library using Composer:

composer require lexik/jwt-authentication-bundle

Step 2. Configure the bundle in your Symfony application by adding the following lines to your config/bundles.php file:

return [
    // ...
    Lexik\Bundle\JWTAuthenticationBundle\LexikJWTAuthenticationBundle::class => ['all' => true],
];

Step 3. Configure the JWT authentication in your config/packages/lexik_jwt_authentication.yaml file. Here's an example configuration:

lexik_jwt_authentication:
    secret_key: '%env(APP_SECRET)%'
    public_key: '%env(JWT_PUBLIC_KEY_PATH)%'
    pass_phrase: '%env(JWT_PASSPHRASE)%'
    token_ttl: 3600

This configuration defines the secret and public keys for JWT encryption, the passphrase for the private key (if using RSA), and the time-to-live (TTL) for the token.

Step 4. Generate the JWT token in your code:

use Lexik\Bundle\JWTAuthenticationBundle\Services\JWTTokenManagerInterface;

// Inject the JWT token manager service into your controller or service
public function myAction(JWTTokenManagerInterface $jwtManager)
{
    // Generate the token for the user
    $user = $this->getUser(); // get the user object from your authentication system
    $token = $jwtManager->create($user);

    // Return the token as a JSON response
    return $this->json(['token' => $token]);
}

 

Read more about this lexik bundle.