Maybe it's a pretty late answer, but I'm posting this for future reference because I was myself looking for an answer to the same question, How to create a user programatically in zizaco/confide? or more generally, how to bypass zizaco/confide's requirement for setting a password when saving a user for the first time?
well, the answer is pretty simple, thanks to the new architecture which Zizaco implemented in the 4.* branch, it's now possible to register a new user validator class see more at the package's readme in short all you need in this very case though, is just to extend the current User validator and override validatePassword() to make it accept empty passwords for new users.
Below is an example implementation:
In routes.php
// we need to register our validator so that it gets used instead of the default one
// Register custom Validator for ConfideUsers
App::bind('confide.user_validator', 'MyUserValidator');
In app/models/MyUserValidator.php (that's basically a copy of the function in the class, simply just added a check whether this is a old user or not (if the user has an ID then this is an update operation) if this is a new user, the method always returns true!
/**
* Class MyUserValidator
* Custom Validation for Confide User
*/
class MyUserValidator extends \Zizaco\Confide\UserValidator //implements \Zizaco\Confide\UserValidatorInterface
{
/**
* Validates the password and password_confirmation of the given
* user
* @param ConfideUserInterface $user
* @return boolean True if password is valid
*/
public function validatePassword(\Zizaco\Confide\ConfideUserInterface $user)
{
$hash = App::make('hash');
if($user->getOriginal('password') != $user->password && $user->getOriginal('id')) {
if ($user->password == $user->password_confirmation) {
// Hashes password and unset password_confirmation field
$user->password = $hash->make($user->password);
unset($user->password_confirmation);
return true;
} else {
$this->attachErrorMsg(
$user,
'validation.confirmed::confide.alerts.wrong_confirmation',
'password_confirmation'
);
return false;
}
}
unset($user->password_confirmation);
return true;
}
}