UserProviderInterface
interface UserProviderInterface
Represents a class that loads UserInterface objects from some source for the authentication system.
In a typical authentication configuration, a username (i.e. some unique user identifier) credential enters the system (via form login, or any method). The user provider that is configured with that authentication method is asked to load the UserInterface object for the given username (via loadUserByUsername) so that the rest of the process can continue.
Internally, a user provider can load users from any source (databases, configuration, web service). This is totally independent of how the authentication information is submitted or what the UserInterface object looks like.
Methods
Loads the user for the given username.
Whether this provider supports the given user class.
Details
UserInterface
loadUserByUsername(string $username)
Loads the user for the given username.
This method must throw UsernameNotFoundException if the user is not found.
UserInterface
refreshUser(UserInterface $user)
Refreshes the user.
It is up to the implementation to decide if the user data should be totally reloaded (e.g. from the database), or if the UserInterface object can just be merged into some internal array of users / identity map.