trying to write Policy for enabling comment of posts in Laravel - php

Question

In laravel I have a Follower table that I use to check if a User is folowing another User and also if he can comment on Posts.
The table is like this:
Schema::create('followers', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->unsignedInteger('publisher_id')->unsigned();
$table->unsignedInteger('follower_id')->unsigned();
$table->boolean('enable_follow')->default('1');
$table->unique(['publisher_id', 'follower_id']);
$table->timestamps();
$table->foreign('publisher_id')
->references('id')
->on('users')
->onDelete('cascade');
$table->foreign('follower_id')
->references('id')
->on('users')
->onDelete('cascade');
});
and these are the checks that I make to decide if a User can comment a Post:
public function canComment(User $user, Post $post)
{
$following = Follower::where('follower_id', $user->id)->where('publisher_id', $post->user_id)->select('enable_follow')->get();
if (!$following->isEmpty()) {
$enabled = $following[0]['enable_follow'];
if ($enabled != '0') {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
} else if ($following->isEmpty()) {
return true;
}
}
And this is the controller part for storing, as You can see I'm trying to authorize like this: $this->authorize('canComment', $post[0]);
public function store(Request $request)
{
//on_post, from_user, body
// define rules
$rules = array(
'post_id' => 'required',
'body' => 'required'
);
$validator = Validator::make(Input::all(), $rules);
$post_id = $request->input('post_id');
$post = Post::findOrFail($post_id);
if ($validator->fails()) {
return Response()->json($validator);
} else {
$this->authorize('canComment', $post);
//prepares object to be stored in DB
$comment = new Comment();
$comment['user_id'] = $request->user()->id;
$comment['post_id'] = $post_id;
$comment['body'] = $request->input('body');
$comment->save();
if ($comment) {
$comment['user_name'] = $request->user()->username;
$comment['comment_id'] = $comment->id;
$comment['token'] = $request->input('_token');
}
return Response()->json($comment);
}
}
The problem here is I get a 403 (Forbidden) error in a situation where I have $following empty and where following is enabled. The Policy is not working as expected.
Source code for authorize method in Gate facade:
public function authorize($ability, $arguments = [])
{
$result = $this->raw($ability, $arguments);
if ($result instanceof Response) {
return $result;
}
return $result ? $this->allow() : $this->deny();
}
Maybe I am not correct returing true or false in the policy as this code expect the result to be an instance of Response but so what do you return to grant or deny access??

Answer 1

The problem was putting the policy inside commentPolicy and so it expected to receive a Comment not a Post, moving it to postPolicy solved it.