I’ve just put together my first app using Zend_Authenticate. According to some tutorials I’ve read they store the user’s “email” column. Is this recommended? I’ve read to store the ID only, then on each request fetch the user by ID. That way, only the ID is stored in the session. Is this recommended with Zend too?

Anyway here is my handling of user login, I’d appreciate any feedback. Basically I’m authenticating. If that passed, I then store the ID in auth storage and a custom flash message. The script then redirects to the homepage (upon which the login form will be replaced with a user panel – e.g. “Welcome back John” – and my flash message will display.

Below is my loginAction method:

public function loginAction()
{
  $form = new LoginForm();

  $form->get('submit')->setValue('Login');

  $request = $this->getRequest();

  if ($request->isPost()) {

      // check the users credentials and authenticate
      $this->getAuthService()
        ->getAdapter()
        ->setIdentity($request->getPost('email'))
        ->setCredential($request->getPost('password'));

      $result = $this->getAuthService()->authenticate();

      if ($result->isValid()) {

        // set the user id in storage
        $resultRow = $this->getAuthService()->getAdapter()->getResultRowObject();
        $this->getAuthService()->getStorage()->write($resultRow->id);

        // set flash messenger
        $this->flashMessenger()->addMessage('You are now logged in');

        // redirect to the home page
        return $this->redirect()->toUrl('/');
      }

  }

    return new ViewModel(array(
      'form' => $form,
    ));
  }

}