VerifyEmailBundle: Love Confirming Emails

Don't know if your users have a valid email address? The VerifyEmailBundle can help!

VerifyEmailBundle generates - and validates - a secure, signed URL that can be emailed to users to confirm their email address. It does this without needing any storage, so you can use your existing entities with minor modifications. This bundle provides:

• A generator to create a signed URL that should be emailed to the user.
• A signed URL validator.
• Peace of mind knowing that this is done without leaking the user's email address into your server logs (avoiding PII problems).

Installation

Using Composer of course!

composer require symfonycasts/verify-email-bundle

Usage

We strongly suggest using Symfony MakerBundle's make:registration-form command to get a feel for how the bundle should be used. It's super simple! Answer a couple questions, and you'll have a fully functional secure registration system with email verification.

bin/console make:registration-form

Setting Things Up Manually

If you want to set things up manually, you can! But do so carefully: email verification is a sensitive, security process. We'll guide you through the important stuff. Using make:registration-form is still the easiest and simplest way.

The example below demonstrates the basic steps to generate a signed URL that is to be emailed to a user after they have registered. The URL is then validated once the user "clicks" the link in their email.

// RegistrationController.php
namespace App\Controller;

use App\Entity\User;
use App\Form\RegistrationFormType;
use App\Security\EmailVerifier;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
use Symfony\Bridge\Twig\Mime\TemplatedEmail;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Mime\Address;
use Symfony\Component\PasswordHasher\Hasher\UserPasswordHasherInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Attribute\Route;
use Symfony\Contracts\Translation\TranslatorInterface;
use SymfonyCasts\Bundle\VerifyEmail\Exception\VerifyEmailExceptionInterface;

class RegistrationController extends AbstractController
{
    public function __construct(private EmailVerifier $emailVerifier)
    {
    }

    #[Route('/register', name: 'app_register')]
    public function register(Request $request, UserPasswordHasherInterface $userPasswordHasher, EntityManagerInterface $entityManager): Response
    {
        $user = new User();
        $form = $this->createForm(RegistrationFormType::class, $user);
        $form->handleRequest($request);

        if ($form->isSubmitted() && $form->isValid()) {
            // encode the plain password
            $user->setPassword(
                $userPasswordHasher->hashPassword(
                    $user,
                    $form->get('plainPassword')->getData()
                )
            );

            $entityManager->persist($user);
            $entityManager->flush();

            // generate a signed url and email it to the user
            $this->emailVerifier->sendEmailConfirmation('app_verify_email', $user,
                (new TemplatedEmail())
                    ->from(new Address('mailer@example.com', 'AcmeMailBot'))
                    ->to($user->getEmail())
                    ->subject('Please Confirm your Email')
                    ->htmlTemplate('registration/confirmation_email.html.twig')
            );
            // do anything else you need here, like send an email

            return $this->redirectToRoute('app_main');
        }

        return $this->render('registration/register.html.twig', [
            'registrationForm' => $form,
        ]);
    }

    #[Route('/verify/email', name: 'app_verify_email')]
    public function verifyUserEmail(Request $request, TranslatorInterface $translator): Response
    {
        $this->denyAccessUnlessGranted('IS_AUTHENTICATED_FULLY');

        // validate email confirmation link, sets User::isVerified=true and persists
        try {
            $this->emailVerifier->handleEmailConfirmation($request, $this->getUser());
        } catch (VerifyEmailExceptionInterface $exception) {
            $this->addFlash('verify_email_error', $translator->trans($exception->getReason(), [], 'VerifyEmailBundle'));

            return $this->redirectToRoute('app_register');
        }

        // @TODO Change the redirect on success and handle or remove the flash message in your templates
        $this->addFlash('success', 'Your email address has been verified.');

        return $this->redirectToRoute('app_register');
    }
}

This uses an EmailVerifier class that you should also add to your app::

// src/Security/EmailVerifier.php
namespace App\Security;

use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
use Symfony\Bridge\Twig\Mime\TemplatedEmail;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\Mailer\MailerInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface;
use SymfonyCasts\Bundle\VerifyEmail\Exception\VerifyEmailExceptionInterface;
use SymfonyCasts\Bundle\VerifyEmail\VerifyEmailHelperInterface;

class EmailVerifier
{
    public function __construct(
        private VerifyEmailHelperInterface $verifyEmailHelper,
        private MailerInterface $mailer,
        private EntityManagerInterface $entityManager
    ) {
    }

    public function sendEmailConfirmation(string $verifyEmailRouteName, UserInterface $user, TemplatedEmail $email): void
    {
        $signatureComponents = $this->verifyEmailHelper->generateSignature(
            $verifyEmailRouteName,
            $user->getId(),
            $user->getEmail()
        );

        $context = $email->getContext();
        $context['signedUrl'] = $signatureComponents->getSignedUrl();
        $context['expiresAtMessageKey'] = $signatureComponents->getExpirationMessageKey();
        $context['expiresAtMessageData'] = $signatureComponents->getExpirationMessageData();

        $email->context($context);

        $this->mailer->send($email);
    }

    /**
     * @throws VerifyEmailExceptionInterface
     */
    public function handleEmailConfirmation(Request $request, UserInterface $user): void
    {
        $this->verifyEmailHelper->validateEmailConfirmationFromRequest($request, $user->getId(), $user->getEmail());

        $user->setIsVerified(true);

        $this->entityManager->persist($user);
        $this->entityManager->flush();
    }
}

Anonymous Validation

It is also possible to allow users to verify their email address without having to be authenticated. A use case for this would be if a user registers on their laptop, but clicks the verification link on their phone. Normally, the user would be required to log in before their email was verified.

We can overcome this by passing a user identifier as a query parameter in the signed url. The diff below demonstrate how this is done based off of the previous examples:

// src/Security/EmailVerifier.php

class EmailVerifier
{
    // ...

    public function sendEmailConfirmation(string $verifyEmailRouteName, UserInterface $user, TemplatedEmail $email): void
    {
        $user = new User();

        // handle the user registration form and persist the new user...
    
        $signatureComponents = $this->verifyEmailHelper->generateSignature(
                $verifyEmailRouteName,
                $user->getId(),
                $user->getEmail(),
+               ['id' => $user->getId()] // add the user's id as an extra query param
            );
    }
}

Once the user has received their email and clicked on the link, the RegistrationController would then validate the signed URL in the following method:

// RegistrationController.php

+use App\Repository\UserRepository;

class RegistrationController extends AbstractController
{
-   public function verifyUserEmail(Request $request): Response
+   public function verifyUserEmail(Request $request, UserRepository $userRepository): Response
    {
-       $this->denyAccessUnlessGranted('IS_AUTHENTICATED_FULLY');
-       $user = $this->getUser();

+       $id = $request->query->get('id'); // retrieve the user id from the url
+
+       // Verify the user id exists and is not null
+       if (null === $id) {
+           return $this->redirectToRoute('app_home');
+       }
+
+       $user = $userRepository->find($id);
+
+       // Ensure the user exists in persistence
+       if (null === $user) {
+           return $this->redirectToRoute('app_home');
+       }

        try {
            $this->verifyEmailHelper->validateEmailConfirmationFromRequest($request, $user->getId(), $user->getEmail());
        } catch (VerifyEmailExceptionInterface $e) {
        // ...
    }
}

Configuration

You can change the default configuration parameters for the bundle by creating a config/packages/verify_email.yaml config file:

symfonycasts_verify_email:
    lifetime: 3600

lifetime

Optional - Defaults to 3600 seconds

This is the length of time a signed URL is valid for in seconds after it has been created.

Reserved Query Parameters

If you add any extra query parameters in the 5th argument of verifyEmailHelper::generateSignature(), such as we did for id above, take note that you cannot use the following query parameters, because they will be overwritten by this bundle:

• token
• expires
• signature

Support

Feel free to open an issue for questions, problems, or suggestions with our bundle. Issues pertaining to Symfony's MakerBundle, specifically make:registration-form, should be addressed in the Symfony Maker repository.

Security Issues

For security related vulnerabilities, we ask that you email ryan@symfonycasts.com instead of creating an issue.

This will give us the opportunity to address the issue without exposing the vulnerability before a fix can be published.