In this episode, we're setting up the login functionality for our app. We basically go through a very similar process as when we built the registration flow, so if you want to try this yourself and already have the register code, you can use it as a starting point!
We'll start by creating a login controller, which is almost a copy-paste from the register controller but with the necessary tweaks, like changing the name and rendering a login view instead of a register view. We also hook up the routes for the login page in our web routes file, just like we did for registration.
Next, we build the login.twig view, mostly copying over the markup from the registration form, but since logging in only requires an email and password, we strip out the first name field and update the button text. We then update our nav so users can see a link to log in if they're not already signed in.
For the actual login logic, we use the framework's authenticate method with the submitted email and password, redirecting the user to their dashboard if successful. At this point, we're keeping things simple without validation or error messages, but we see what happens if the login fails—nothing fancy yet, just a redirect back to the login page. The groundwork is all here so that, in the future, we can add some flash messages to let users know if their login failed or succeeded.
So, by the end of this episode, users can now log in and get redirected to their dashboard, and we've laid out where and how to add polish like error handling later.