Laravel 4 Auth With Token

Question

I asked a question the right way to structure a project with Laravel 4. I currently am making an API (to support a mobile app) and a web app to serve as the backend.

1) What would be the best practice for this? Two installations (the web app would get data via the api (what I have done)? Using one Laravel installation with namespaces? One Laravel installation with folders?

2) I have make a custom auth driver for Laravel and got it working. In the return on login I return an API token which I need for subsequent calls. I understand that in Laravel, only the ID of the user is saved, how would I make the api token saved at well when Auth::check() passes? Some of this stuff is making me question if it is bad to use Laravel in this decoupled from the db setting because it makes Eloquent not an option.

Answer 1

I have 2 separate installations - one for API and one for web (which uses this API).
Don't bother with additional cost of +-50MB of another installation - separate them!

AUTH On each request I set 'Access-Token' header on client side. This token is read then on API side with Header::get('Access-Token'). Then I store authenticated user just for this one and only request - API should be stateless (no user data in session, require auth on each request).

Among other things I also check Accept and Content-Type headers - my API only accept application/json and sports responses in application/json format as well.