CakePHP Auth Login Stopped Working - cakephp

Question

My auth component has been working fine for the past year. I was logged into my site about two hours ago and made a single minor change. I got off for those two hours and since I've returned about a half hour ago, I have been unable to log into my site. The error message says the username/password combination is incorrect. I thought somehow the values got changed in my database or that my browser had autosaved an old password so just to be sure I updated the password in my database with it's appropriate md5 hashed value and I tried it again in my browser. It still did not work.
I emptied my cache (which is something I do quite often any way) because I was suggested to do so from this post but this too did not work (nor did it help the poster of that question). That person's solution of having added something to the view file that broke the database connection does not apply to me because I did not change any of the view files. Nor have I changed the user model or app controller. The ONLY thing I changed during the time I was on earlier was that I edited the UsersController online() action. I have since changed it back. In fact, I went into my site backup utility and restored all controller and model files to their latest backup which was 2 days ago when everything was working. Still no affect.
I cannot log into any of the accounts I have registered. I even unhashed one of the passwords in the database and tried logging in with that account but that didn't work either.
AppController
//I HAVE NOT CHANGED THIS IN SEVERAL MONTHS
public $helpers = array('Form', 'Html', 'Custom', 'Time', 'Js', 'Cache');
public $components = array('CustomPage', 'Session', 'CustomUser',
'Auth' => array(
'autoRedirect' => false,
'loginAction' => array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'login', 'prefix' => false, 'admin' => false, 'moderate' => false),
'loginRedirect' => array('prefix' => false, 'admin' => false, 'moderate' => false, 'controller' => 'account', 'action' => 'index'),
'logoutRedirect' => array('controller' => 'index', 'prefix' => false, 'admin' => false, 'moderate' => false),
'authError' => "You can't access that page",
'authorize' => array('Controller')
)
); // components
public function isAuthorized($user) {
return true;
}
UsersController
// DID NOT CHANGE FOLLOWING ACTION
public function login() {
if ($this->Session->read('Auth.User')) {
$this->Session->setFlash('You are already logged in');
$this->redirect(array('controller' => 'account', 'action' => 'index'));
}
$this->layout = "simple";
$this->set('title_for_layout', 'Login');
if ($this->request->is('post')) {
$this->User->UsersOnline->deleteAll(array('UsersOnline.session' => $this->viewVars['session_session']), false);
if ($this->Auth->login()) { // check user is logged in
$this->User->id = $this->Auth->user('id');
$this->User->saveField('last_login', date(Configure::read('Site.date_format'))); // save login time
$this->redirect($this->Auth->redirect()); // redirect to default place
} else {
$this->Session->setFlash('Your username/password combination was incorrect');
}
}
} // end login
// THE FOLLOWING ACTION WAS THE ONLY THING
// THAT WAS CHANGED BUT IT IS NOW BACK TO ORIGINAL VERSION
public function online() {
$page_id = $this->viewVars['page_id'];
$link = $this->viewVars['link'];
// CONTAIN
$this->User->UsersOnline->contain(array(
'User' => array(
'fields' => array(
'User.username', 'User.online'
),
'Avatar' => array(
'fields' => array(
'Avatar.file'
)
)
)
));
if($page_id){
$this->set('users', $this->paginate($this->User->UsersOnline, array('UsersOnline.page_id' => $page_id)));
$this->set('title_for_layout', 'Fans Online');
}
else{
$this->set('title_for_layout', 'Users Online');
$this->set('users', $this->paginate($this->User->UsersOnline));
$this->layout = "default";
}
} // end online action
My user model uses the standard "username" and "password" columns to authenticate a user.
I've added the following code to my UserController login() action and the correct result is printed...
$password = md5($this->request->data['User']['password']);
print_r(
$this->User->find('first',
array(
'User.username' => $this->request->data['User']['username'],
'User.password' => $password
)
)
);
Again, I have restored ALL controller and model files to their state from 2 days ago so I really have no idea what could be causing this.
Edit 1: And now just to be safe, I reverted all my view files back to their latest backup versions from this weekend. This did not fix the issue.
Edit 2: If I debug $this->Auth->login, the result is empty. Why would this be empty all of a sudden if nothing has changed?
Edit 3: My UsersController register() action properly creates a new user and automatically logs that user in.
UsersController
public function register() {
if($this->Session->read('Auth.User')) {
$this->Session->setFlash('You are already registered');
$this->redirect(array('controller' => 'account', 'action' => 'index'));
}
$this->layout = "simple";
$this->set('title_for_layout', 'Register');
if ($this->request->is('post')) {
$this->User->create();
if ($this->User->save($this->request->data)) {
$id = $this->User->id;
$this->request->data['User'] = array_merge($this->request->data['User'], array('id' => $id));
if($this->Auth->login($this->request->data['User'])){
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Your account has successfully been created and you have logged in'));
$this->redirect(array('controller' => 'account', 'action' => 'index'));
} // end if account created and successful log in
else{
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Your account has successfully been created but you cannot log in'));
} // end else if account created but not logged in
} else {
$this->Session->setFlash(__('Your account could not be created. Please, try again.'));
} // end else if account cannot be created
} // end if method is post
} // end register

Answer 1

Well, I never figured out what the INITIAL issue was but now I found out that reverting all of my changed controller, model, AND view files seem to solve the issue. It still bothers me that I don't know what the initial issue was.
However, I DID discover that after I updated all my passwords in my database to their corresponding md5 hash, that was giving me the ongoing issue. I guess Cake doesn't use md5 which I thought so the passwords weren't being matched properly. So even after reverting all my changed files, the passwords all became incorrect.
If I ever figure out what the original issue was I will update.

Answer 2

It may help to remove all files from tmp/cache and tmp/models

Answer 3

I had the same problem.It was working fine but suddenly after some changes in code that was nothing to do with the login part the login function was not working and deleting the changes I made didnt help and when I searched and find out that you have the same problem and you didnt find what the problem is I figured out that it must be some thing very simple as it didnt give me any error and I suddenly found that when I was editing the user controller file I accidently wrote the ' char in the begining of the file and I removed it and the problem is solved!