# Identity from Custom Authentication
**URL:** https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694
**Category:** Need Help
**Created:** [September 3, 2025, 5:33pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694 "2025-09-03T17:33:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jim.Lohiser](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Jim.Lohiser)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2025, 5:33pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/1 "2025-09-03T17:33:33Z")
Hello everyone. I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I am working on migrating a project from CakePHP 3 to CakePHP 5. The old project used a custom Auth component and I am struggling to migrate this to the new Authentication framework. I have created a custom identifier and can successfully authenticate. The problem is with the Identifier/Identity/Resolver portions of Authentication. The documentation, which seems to be limited, primarily references pulling identity information via a database and ORM. In this project, the user data is not stored in the local database. It is queried via API calls from a 3rd party system.
In the old Auth component, the API was queried as part of a custom authentication() function and set as follows.
```auto
$authenticate['id'] = $contact['id'];
$authenticate['username'] = $username;
$authenticate['role'] = $contact['role'];
$authenticate['first_name'] = $contact['first_name'];
$authenticate['last_name'] = $contact['last_name'];
```
This data was then available under the Auth key in the session.
What I cannot replicate is how to get the data for the user that is returned from the API call into CakePHP. Authentication-\>getIdentity() and Authentication-\>getIdentifier() both return null after a successful login.
Does anyone have a simple example setting the authentication identity to an array of information that is NOT from an SQL query?
Thank you.
---
### Author:  [@dereuromark](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/dereuromark)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 9:39am UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/2 "2025-09-04T09:39:42Z")
Isnt the identity available as
```auto
$result = $this->Authentication->getResult();
if ($result && $result->isValid()) {
/** @var \Authentication\Identity|null $identity */
$identity = $this->request
->getAttribute('identity');
```
---
### Author:  [@KevinPfeifer](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/KevinPfeifer)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 9:46am UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/3 "2025-09-04T09:46:49Z")
I have added the following helper method in my AppController to make sure I always get a user instance
```php
/**
* @return \AlfredStaffMembers\Model\Entity\StaffMember
*/
public function getLoggedInUser(): StaffMember
{
$staffMember = $this->Authentication->getIdentity()?->getOriginalData();
if (!$staffMember instanceof StaffMember) {
throw new RedirectException('/logout');
}
return $staffMember;
}
```
I have a custom User rmodel called “StaffMember” as you can see.
---
### Author:  [@Jim.Lohiser](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Jim.Lohiser)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 12:59pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/4 "2025-09-04T12:59:11Z")
It is not. It returns null.
---
### Author:  [@KevinPfeifer](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/KevinPfeifer)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 1:09pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/5 "2025-09-04T13:09:15Z")
Then you are not logged in / don’t have a persistent authenticator set up (like Session Authenticator)
---
### Author:  [@Jim.Lohiser](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Jim.Lohiser)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 2:07pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/6 "2025-09-04T14:07:32Z")
According to the output of Authentication-\>getResult(), I am logged in (‘\_status’ =\> ‘SUCCESS’).
```auto
2025-09-04 13:58:50 debug: Authentication->getResult() = \Authentication\Authenticator\Result::__set_state(array(
'_status' => 'SUCCESS',
'_data' =>
array (
'login_type' => 'customer',
'contact' =>
array (
'id' => 1000,
'custid' => 14175,
'first_name' => 'Jim',
'last_name' => 'Lohiser',
'role' => 'Administrative',
),
'customer' =>
array (
'id' => 14175,
'name' => 'Jim Lohiser',
'username' => 'jiml',
'password' => 'xxxxxxxx',
),
'fields' =>
array (
'id' => 1000,
'email' => NULL,
),
),
'_errors' =>
array (
),
))
```
$service-\>loadAuthenticator() is being called in src/Application.php for both Authentication.Session and Authentication.Form, so session authentication should be enabled.
---
### Author:  [@Jim.Lohiser](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Jim.Lohiser)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 2:24pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/7 "2025-09-04T14:24:38Z")
So I have made an incremental bit of progress. Authentication appears to be successful and I am able to pass all of the needed data from my custom Identifier class and then access it in a controller using the example below. This gives me access to the data in the “\_data” protected property.
```auto
$authenticationResult = $this->Authentication->getResult();
if ($authenticationResult && $authenticationResult->isValid()) {
$authenticationData = $authenticationResult->getData();
}
}
```
I am left with the issue of the missing identity, which I still have no idea how to solve. I am trying to find out where or how the identity is set. It does not appear to be set via the identify() function in the Identifier class or, if it is, I do not understand how to do it. Do I need to create a custom Resolver class in order to get getIdentity()/getIdentifier() return a result?
---
### Author:  [@Jim.Lohiser](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Jim.Lohiser)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 6:46pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/8 "2025-09-04T18:46:45Z")
A little more progress. In identify() in my custom Identifier class, I am now returning an Identity object rather than just an array.
```auto
$data = [
'id' => $authPlatypus['contact']['id'],
'login_type' => 'customer',
'contact' => $authPlatypus['contact'],
'customer' => $authPlatypus['customer'],
];
$identity = new Identity($data);
return $identity;
```
Then I added some temporary debug logging to vendor/cakephp/authentication/src/AuthenticationService.php to see what is happening.
getIdentity() gets the data from \_result. Data looks ok.
```auto
2025-09-04 18:15:10 debug: Authentication\AuthenticationService->getIdentity() $this->_result = \Authentication\Authenticator\Result::__set_state(array(
'_status' => 'SUCCESS',
'_data' =>
\Authentication\Identity::__set_state(array(
'_defaultConfig' =>
array (
'fieldMap' =>
array (
'id' => 'id',
),
),
'data' =>
array (
'id' => 1000,
'login_type' => 'customer',
'contact' =>
array (
'id' => 1000,
'custid' => 14175,
'first_name' => 'Jim',
'last_name' => 'Lohiser',
'role' => 'Administrative',
),
'customer' =>
array (
'id' => 14175,
'name' => 'Jim Lohiser',
'username' => 'jiml',
'password' => ' ********',
),
),
'_config' =>
array (
'fieldMap' =>
array (
'id' => 'id',
),
),
'_configInitialized' => true,
)),
'_errors' =>
array (
),
))
```
getIdentity() then strips out the Identity object, puts it into $identityData, and then passes that to buildIdentity(). buildIdentity() checks to see if it is already an Identity object (it is) and then simply returns $identityData back to getIdentity(). getIdentity() ultimately returns the data in $identityData.
```auto
2025-09-04 18:15:10 debug: Authentication\AuthenticationService->getIdentity() $identityData = \Authentication\Identity::__set_state(array(
'_defaultConfig' =>
array (
'fieldMap' =>
array (
'id' => 'id',
),
),
'data' =>
array (
'id' => 1000,
'login_type' => 'customer',
'contact' =>
array (
'id' => 1000,
'custid' => 14175,
'first_name' => 'Jim',
'last_name' => 'Lohiser',
'role' => 'Administrative',
),
'customer' =>
array (
'id' => 14175,
'name' => 'Jim Lohiser',
'username' => 'jiml',
'password' => ' ********',
),
),
'_config' =>
array (
'fieldMap' =>
array (
'id' => 'id',
),
),
'_configInitialized' => true,
))
```
However, the next debug log is from the login() function in the controller right after it passes the authentication.
```auto
$result = $this->Authentication->getResult();
Log::debug('Authentication->getResult() = '.var_export($result, TRUE));
// If the user is logged in send them away.
if ($result && $result->isValid()) {
Log::debug('Authentication->getIdentity() = '.var_export($this->Authentication->getIdentity(), TRUE));
Log::debug('Authentication->getIdentifier() = '.var_export($this->Authentication->getIdentifier(), TRUE));
return $this->redirect('/dashboard');
}
```
And getIdentity() is now NULL.
```auto
2025-09-04 18:15:11 debug: Authentication->getIdentity() = NULL
```
Something is happening between these few lines of code above that seems to be causing the identity to be lost.
---
### Author:  [@Jim.Lohiser](https://discourse.cakephp.org/u/Jim.Lohiser)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2025, 8:25pm UTC](https://discourse.cakephp.org/t/identity-from-custom-authentication/12694/9 "2025-09-04T20:25:16Z")
**Solved**. In my login() function, I was calling logout() before calling the example Authentication calls for logging in. This was a conversion from my old code for Auth. The reasoning behind it was that if a logged in user called the login action, then log them out and start a new login process. This does not work with the Authentication function. I removed the following line and everything is now working.
`$this->Authentication->logout();`