Customizing User Provider

Creating Your Own UserModel

If you want to customize user attributes, you need to create your own User Provider class. The only requirement is that your new class MUST extend the provided CodeIgniter\Shield\Models\UserModel.

Shield has a CLI command to quickly create a custom UserModel class by running the following command in the terminal:

php spark shield:model UserModel

The class name is optional. If none is provided, the generated class name would be UserModel.

Configuring to Use Your UserModel

After creating the class, set your model classname to the $userProvider property in app/Config/Auth.php:

public string $userProvider = \App\Models\UserModel::class;

Customizing Your UserModel

Customize your model as you like.

If you add attributes, don't forget to add the attributes to the $allowedFields property.

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace App\Models;

use CodeIgniter\Shield\Models\UserModel as ShieldUserModel;

class UserModel extends ShieldUserModel
{
    protected function initialize(): void
    {
        parent::initialize();

        $this->allowedFields = [
            ...$this->allowedFields,
            'first_name', // Added
            'last_name',  // Added
        ];
    }
}

Creating a Custom User Entity

Starting from v1.2.0, UserModel in Shield has the createNewUser() method to create a new User Entity.

$user = $userModel->createNewUser($data);

It takes an optional user data array as the first argument, and passes it to the constructor of the $returnType class.

If your custom User entity cannot be instantiated in this way, override this method.