Laravel Authentication hasValidCredentials failing

I am trying to setup Doctrine 2 Auth for a Laravel 5.3 app. I am using the Laravel generated Auth controllers so it's not my own custom implementation. I have made a few small changes (namely for persisting the user to the database using Doctrine) and got the registration working however when I try to login, it keeps failing authentication.

I have stepped through with a debugger and it seems to be consistently failing on the function hasValidCredentials (located at vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Auth/SessionGuard.php) as detailed below:

  /**
     * Check the given plain value against a hash.
     *
     * @param  string  $value
     * @param  string  $hashedValue
     * @param  array   $options
     * @return bool
     */
    public function check($value, $hashedValue, array $options = [])
    {
        if (strlen($hashedValue) === 0) {
            return false;
        }

        return password_verify($value, $hashedValue);
    }

For reference, my values for $value and $hashedValue are as follows:

$value = "tester";
$hashedValue = "$2y$10$ZSLRE3LAVA8myaH8mu6TNeumQxHdmKRbv/zZdFQeDujZ8JolshTOu";

A screenshot of the Variables as per my last XDebug session shows the exact type of the variables:

However when it hits password_verify, it always evaluates to false and then the hasValidCredentials check fails.

I am storing my user as follows in my database:

So I know that the hashed password is long enough and being stored in the database. I see that $hashedValue is returned in double quotes, could this be a problem?

Regardless I cannot login as the attempt function of the Session Guard class always fails as hasValidCredentials always returns false and I am quite stumped as the credentials are accurate.

Wondering if anyone has any ideas as to how to resolve this?

Thanks

via Chebli Mohamed