Validate Customer credentials in Magento 2

Question

I'm trying to make a login of a user externally in PHP.

Need to know which class should be used in Magento 2 to validate by Email & password and once validated, open the session.

I'm dealing with CustomerRepository Class, where there is a function that's supposed fetch a Customer by Email and returns a CustomerModel Object but no success. The idea is to get the Model from such user and in case the Model has data, get the password and compare.

$this->answer = $this->customer_Repository->get("[email protected]");

When I print in console the answer, it's empty.

I do not find anything related to this topic. Is There any Class that makes this operation directly?

Answer 1

I believe Magento\Customer\Api\AccountManagementInterface::authenticate() method call will help you to validate email as well as password. You may also want to check implementation of the Magento\Customer\Controller\Account\LoginPost::execute() method and how session is prepared in case of success authentication.