AuthorizationRequired

A simple and efficient authorization package for the Laravel framework

What this package can and cannot do

This packages uses the available Eloquent hooks to impose rules for reading and writing your Models. No more, no less.

Will protect:

• Read access & creation of new models
• Updates and deletes of models, invoked on the model itself

Will not protect:

• Raw queries: DB::table('users')->delete()
• Mass updates and deletes: User::where('role', 'admin')->delete()

Please note the fundamental difference between

✅ User::find(12)->delete(); // Invokes delete on the User Model
❌ User::where('id', 12)->delete() // Invokes delete on the Eloquent Builder
❌ DB::table('users')->where('id', 12)->delete() // Invokes delete on the Query Builder
❌ DB::delete("DELETE FROM `users` WHERE `id` = 12") // Executes a raw query

This package will only protect guard deletes/updates of the first type. The latter three will pass no matter what rules you impose.

Installation via Composer

Note: this package can only be used in combination with the Laravel framework.

Use composer to use AuthorizationRequired in your project

composer require orottier/authorization-required
# (use version `1.*` for Laravel `5.2` and lower)
# (use version `2.*` for Laravel `5.3` and above)

How it works

The Laravel models you want to protect should include the AuthorizationRequired trait and should have an authorization policy defined for create, update and delete actions.

The following method is placed on your model:

public static function authorizationReadScope(\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder $query);

Use this query scope to limit the read access of your model. Together with the authorization policy, the rules of reading, updating, creating and deleting the model are defined.

Read behaviour

Calling Model::find will simply yield null if the the rules prevent the object to be seen (as if it did not exist). Your application has probably been configured to return a 404 status code in these cases.

Write behaviour (update, create, delete)

If your policy rules forbid writing the model, an AuthorizationRequired\PermissionException is thrown. Specifically: UpdatePermissionException, CreatePermissionException and DeletePermissionException. Your application can convert this into a nice 403 page using the render function in App\Exception.

Note that by Laravel's defaults, a missing rule will not allow any operations. Also, there must be a logged in user for any of the policies to be accepted.

Example usage

To illustrate the usage of this package, we will put authorization rules on a simple application that allows users to post and modify blog items (referred to as Post).

To put authorization rules on an Eloquent model, include the AuthorizationRequired trait:

<?php

// ...

use AuthorizationRequired\AuthorizationRequired;

class Post extends Model
{
    use AuthorizationRequired;

    // ...

}

By default, all read and write access is denied for posts now. Your application will look very empty. We should allow users to view posts that are visible and published. Of course a user should be able to see, edit and delete all of his own posts, even the hidden ones.

Allow reading

Read access rules are written as a query scope. By defining the function authorizationReadScope we will override the default 'deny all' behaviour:

<?php

// ...

use AuthorizationRequired\AuthorizationRequired;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;

class Post extends Model
{
    use AuthorizationRequired;

    public static function authorizationReadScope(Builder $query)
    {
        if (Auth::check() && Auth::user()->isSuperAdmin()) {
            return $query;
        }
        $userId = Auth::check() ? Auth::user()->id : null;
        return $query->where('published_at', '<=', date('Y-m-d H:i:s'))
            ->where('hidden', false)
            ->orWhere('user_id', $userId);
    }

    // ...

}

If you wish to impose no restrictions on read access, simply pass the query unaltered:

public static function authorizationReadScope(Builder $query)
{
    return $query;
}

Allow editing

Update/Create/Delete rules should be defined as an authorization policy.

<?php

namespace App\Policies;

use App\User;
use App\Post;

class PostPolicy
{
    public function update(User $user, Post $post)
    {
        return Auth::check()
            && ($post->user_id === $user->id || $user->isSuperAdmin());
    }

All users can create a post:

public function create(User $user)
{
    return true;
}

We will set the rules for deleting a post equal to the rules for editing the post:

public function delete(User $user, Post $post)
{
    return $this->update($user, $post)
}

That's it!