Laravel 5.1 users, roles and actions - php

Question

I am creating an application using Laravel 5.1 with users, roles and actions.
The table setup is like so:
user
id name
1 John Smith
2 Fred Smith
role
id name
1 Administrator
2 Customer
role_user
user_id role_id
1 1
2 1
action
id name description path
1 dashboard ability to access dashboard /admin
2 editAdmin ability to edit admins /admin/users/administrators/{id}/edit
action_role
action_id role_id
1 1
2 1
The user table holds ALL users on the site, including administrators and customers.
The role table holds all the possible roles a user can have. For example Administrator or Customer.
The role_user table is a pivot table which links role to user.
The action table lists all of the actions possible (i.e. urls or routes) on the app.
The action_role is a pivot table which links action to role.
So to summarise:
Users have roles
Roles have actions
A user can have many roles
A role can have many actions
I want to have a middleware setup which checks on page load if the user has permissions to view the current page. In order to do this, I need to be able to access a users actions, using a call like this:
$user->roles()->actions();
How do I setup my eloquent relationships to support this kind of call?
UPDATE
My relationships are setup like so in my models:
User
/**
* The roles that belong to the user.
*
* #return Object
*/
public function roles()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\User\Role')->withTimestamps();
}
Role
/**
* The actions that belong to the role.
*
* #return Object
*/
public function actions()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\User\Action');
}
/**
* The users that belong to the role.
*
* #return Object
*/
public function users()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\User\User');
}
Action
/**
* The roles that belong to the action.
*
* #return Object
*/
public function roles()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\User\Role');
}

Answer 1

Eloquent does not have a HasManyThrough relationship across 2 pivot tables.
1. You can get the actions by lazy eager loading the roles and actions, then extracting them:
$actions = $user->load('roles.actions')->roles->pluck('actions')->collapse()->unique();
2. You can check the action directly in the database, using a whereHas constraint:
$allowed = $user->roles()->whereHas('actions', function ($query) use ($action) {
$query->where('name', $action);
})->exists();

Answer 2

For handling user, user roles and user permissions you can simply use Toddish package.
There are lot of things this package does for you. like:
$user->is('Your Defined Role');
$user->can('add_user');
$user->level(7);
For installation just read it's documentation.

Answer 3

Although you have mentioned that your Eloquent models (and their relationships) are set up, I am assuming that you have the following in your application already:
User model
class User extends Eloquent {
public function roles() {
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\Role');
}
}
Role model
class Role extends Eloquent {
public function actions() {
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\Action');
}
public function users() {
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\User');
}
}
Action model
class Action extends Eloquent{
public function roles(){
return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\Role');
}
}
Given the above set properly, you can't certainly make a call like the following as Laravel will assume you're making a call to a Query Builder method or whatever [which in fact doesn't exist]:
$userActions = App\Models\User::find(1)->roles()->actions();
Instead, you have to use Laravel's magical whereHas method to query relations where multiple nested relations are involved.
Now, having the user's id and the current allowed action [which indeed can be utilized in your middleware], it can be determined whether the user is allowed to see the page:
$hasAccess = App\Models\User::whereHas('roles.actions', function($q) use ($id, $action){
$q->where('users.id', $id);
$q->where('actions.name', $action);
})->get()->toArray();
if($hasAccess){ // or `count($hasAccess) > 0`. The former will work since any number > 0 evaluates to true in PHP
//user has access
}
Notice the nesting of relationships with ..
Relationship Existence in Laravel:
In Laravel the existence of a relationship between models is determined with has and whereHas methods. The has method is used to only determine if a relationship exists, e.g. by executing App\User::has('roles')->get() you'll always get a list/collection of users which at least have any roles.
More power to this can be added with whereHas with which you can add where clauses to the actual query.

Answer 4

Hi this is how I solved this.
I didn't use an actions table. Just users, roles and the user_role table.
After the solution, I pass my custom middleware a role array to every route I create like:
Route::get('insights',[
'as'=>'insights',
**'middleware'=>['access.level'],**
**'roles'=>['admin','customer'],**
'uses'=>'CustomersController#index'
]);
Files modified:
app\Http\Controllers\Controller.php
Custom middleware: CheckAccessLevel
app\Http\Kernel.php
app\Http\routes.php
Controller.php
In this file, I wanted to eager load the current logged in user with his roles and make it a global variable in all views as {{currentUser}} and in all my controllers as "$this->currentUser". this is the code:
protected $currentUser;
public function __construct() {
if(isset(Auth::user()->username)){
$this->currentUser = User::with('roles')->where(['username' => Auth::user()->username])->first();
// Share this property with all the views and controllers in your application.
view()->share('currentUser', $this->currentUser);
}
}
Custom Middleware: CheckAccessLevel.php
Over here in the middleware, I retrieve the roles array passed to the route and and also the roles assigned to the current user.
After i get these variables, I intersect them to see if there is a match before I pass the user on. check the code below:
//if user is not logged in, show them where to login :)
if (!Auth::check()) {
return redirect()->route('user::login');
}
//Otherwise get the roles for that route
$get_route_action = $request->route()->getAction();
$get_route_roles = $get_route_action['roles'];
//Eager load the user with their list of roles
$eager_user = User::with('roles')->where(['id'=>$request->user()->id])->first();
$user_roles = $eager_user->roles->pluck('role_name')->toArray();
//intersect the users roles with the route roles to see if there is a match
foreach ($user_roles as $user_role){
if(in_array($user_role, $get_route_roles)){
return $next($request);
}
}
Kernel.php
over here, i register my route as "access.level" inside the route middleware group
Route.php
then whenever I create a route, I just pass in the allowed role names to it and voala! It works for me..
I hope this helps.

Answer 5

You need a HasManyThrough relationship here.. Here's something to get you started.
Judging by your given tables I see it has a one-to-many relationship with user and roles. While action and roles also has many-to-many relationship.
But first you need to create models for each entities(user,role,action) to follow the MVC structure. You could easily make these models from the command line using the Laravel's artisan with this command.
php artisan make:model User
Make sure to also add or change columns in the newly created migrations. Assuming you also have your pivot tables set up for the 3 tables, you can now add the relationships.
class User extends Model {
//
protected $table = 'users';
/*
* #var table
*
*/
public function action()
{
return $this->hasManyThrough('App\Action', 'App\Role');
}
}
Now you have a HasManyThrough relationship. you can query like this directly no need to include role.
//this
$actions = User::find(1)->action();
//instead of
$actions = User::find(1)->role()->action();
//this will return all actions available to a user with id of 1
NOTE I also suggest you make your role and user models to be on a one to one relationship.