Laravel searching for 'api_token' coloumn after installing Sanctum

Hi there,

I've come back to a Laravel project of mine and wanted to add a REST-API. For that I decided to go with Laravel Sanctum, for ease of managing API tokens. I am running Laravel 11.

I read the documentation and installed it, the new table with the access tokens got generated and I've provisioned users succesfully using my seeders.

When I try to access a protected route now, I get the following error:

"SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'api_token' in 'where clause' (Connection: mysql, SQL: select * from `users` where `api_token` = pokawdpowkadpo.... limit 1)"

This error is correct, since there is no coloumn "api_token" in my users table. I thought, Sanctum should use it's own table for finding the user and getting the token? Why does it need a api_token column, that is not documented?

In my search of solving this problem, I stumbled accross my "auth.php" file:

        'api' => [
            'driver' => 'token',
            'provider' => 'users',
            'hash' => false,
        ],

As you can see, for my "api" guard "token" is set. Is this correct or should there be something else? When I try to change this to Sanctum, the whole site crashes without an error in any log file.

My route is protected using the following in the api.php:

Route::middleware('auth:sanctum')->get('/test', [TestController::class, 'test']);

Let me know, if you need anything to help me. Thank you in advance for your help.

Thank you. Marc