Question

I have a controller that is supposed to add a user through a simple form, but I cannot get the user to be manually authenticated.

use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\Authentication\Token\UsernamePasswordToken    

public function addAction($user)
    {
           $token =new UsernamePasswordToken(
                    $user->getUsername(),
                    $user->getPassword(),
                    'secured_area',
                   $user->getRoles()
                    );

           $this->get('security.context')->setToken($token);
           // as suggested in some other answers

           $request->getSession()->set('_security_secured_area', serialize($token));
           // as suggested in http://techblog.zabuchy.net/2012/manually-authenticate-symfony-2-user/

            return $this->redirect($this->generateUrl('acme_project_secure_show' )
                    );
        }
    }

The redirection to the secure route works, but then the method $this->getUser() returns null as the authentication is not set properly…
I can get the user from $user= $this->get('security.context')->getToken(); instead of $user= $this->get('security.context')->getToken()->getUser(); shortcut for $this->getUser() see the Book here
Any idea why?

Answer 1

Problem solved – two points were missing: 1) it was necessary to dispatch the InteractiveLoginEvent -thanks mpm for the link 2) the route of this controller was not under the secured_area firewall – merci Florian 😉