Bouncer

This package adds a bouncer at Laravel's access gate.

• Introduction
• Installation
  • Enabling cache
• Usage
  • Creating roles and abilities
  • Assigning roles to a user
  • Giving a user an ability directly
  • Restricting an ability to a model
  • Retracting a role from a user
  • Removing an ability
  • Checking a user's roles
  • Getting all abilities for a user
  • Authorizing users
  • Refreshing the cache
  • Seeding roles and abilities
• Cheat sheet
• License

Introduction

Bouncer provides a mechanism to handle roles and abilities in Laravel's ACL. With an expressive and fluent syntax, it stays out of your way as much as possible: use it when you want, ignore it when you don't.

For a quick, glanceable list of Bouncer's features, check out the cheat sheet.

Bouncer works well with other abilities you have hard-coded in your own app. Your code always takes precedence: if your code allows an action, the bouncer will not interfere.

Once installed, you can simply tell the bouncer what you want to allow at the gate:

// Give a user the ability to create posts
Bouncer::allow($user)->to('create', Post::class);

// Alternatively, do it through a role
Bouncer::allow('admin')->to('create', Post::class);
Bouncer::assign('admin')->to($user);

// You can also grant an ability only to a specific model
Bouncer::allow($user)->to('edit', $post);

When you check abilities at the gate, the bouncer will be consulted first. If he sees an ability that has been granted to the current user (whether directly, or through a role) he'll authorize the check.

Installation

Simply install the bouncer package with composer:

$ composer require silber/bouncer

Once the composer installation completes, you can add the service provider and alias the facade. Open config/app.php, and make the following changes:

1. Add a new item to the providers array:

Silber\Bouncer\BouncerServiceProvider::class

2. Add a new item to the aliases array:

'Bouncer' => Silber\Bouncer\BouncerFacade::class

This part is optional. If you don't want to use the facade, you can skip step 2.

3. Add the bouncer's trait to your user model:

use Silber\Bouncer\Database\HasRolesAndAbilities;

class User extends Model
{
    use HasRolesAndAbilities;
}

4. Now, to run the bouncer's migrations, first publish the package's migrations into your app's migrations directory, by running the following command:

$ php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Silber\Bouncer\BouncerServiceProvider" --tag="migrations"

5. Finally, run the migrations:

$ php artisan migrate

Enabling cache

All queries executed by the bouncer are cached for the current request. For better performance, you may want to use cross-request caching. To enable cross-request caching, add this to your AppServiceProvider's boot method:

Bouncer::cache();

Warning: if you enable cross-request caching, you are responsible to refresh the cache whenever you make changes to user's abilities/roles. For how to refresh the cache, read refreshing the cache.

Usage

Adding roles and abilities to users is made extremely easy. You do not have to create a role or an ability in advance. Simply pass the name of the role/ability, and Bouncer will create it if it doesn't exist.

Note: the examples below all use the Bouncer facade. If you don't like facades, you can instead inject an instance of Silber\Bouncer\Bouncer into your class.

Creating roles and abilities

Let's create a role called admin and give it the ability to ban-users from our site:

Bouncer::allow('admin')->to('ban-users');

That's it. Behind the scenes, Bouncer will create both a Role model and an Ability model for you.

Assigning roles to a user

To now give the admin role to a user, simply tell the bouncer that the given user should be assigned the admin role:

Bouncer::assign('admin')->to($user);

Alternatively, you can call the assign method directly on the user:

$user->assign('admin');

Giving a user an ability directly

Sometimes you might want to give a user an ability directly, without using a role:

Bouncer::allow($user)->to('ban-users');

Here too you can accomplish the same directly off of the user:

$user->allow('ban-users');

Restricting an ability to a model

Sometimes you might want to restrict an ability to a specific model type. Simply pass the model name as a second argument:

Bouncer::allow($user)->to('edit', Post::class);

If you want to restrict the ability to a specific model instance, pass in the actual model instead:

Bouncer::allow($user)->to('edit', $post);

Retracting a role from a user

The bouncer can also retract a previously-assigned role from a user:

Bouncer::retract('admin')->from($user);

Or do it directly on the user:

$user->retract('admin');

Removing an ability

The bouncer can also remove an ability previously granted to a user:

Bouncer::disallow($user)->to('ban-users');

Or directly on the user:

$user->disallow('ban-users');

Note: if the user has a role that allows them to ban-users they will still have that ability. To disallow it, either remove the ability from the role or retract the role from the user.

If the ability has been granted through a role, tell the bouncer to remove the ability from the role instead:

Bouncer::disallow('admin')->to('ban-users');

To remove an ability for a specific model type, pass in its name as a second argument:

Bouncer::disallow($user)->to('delete', Post::class);

Warning: if the user has an ability to delete a specific $post instance, the code above will not remove that ability. You will have to remove the ability separately - by passing in the actual $post as a second argument - as shown below.

To remove an ability for a specific model instance, pass in the actual model instead:

Bouncer::disallow($user)->to('delete', $post);

Checking a user's roles

Note: Generally speaking, you should not have a need to check roles directly. It is better to allow a role certain abilities, then check for those abilities instead. If what you need is very general, you can create very broad abilities. For example, an access-dashboard ability is always better than checking for admin or editor roles directly. For the rare occasion that you do want to check a role, that functionality is available here.

The bouncer can check if a user has a specific role:

Bouncer::is($user)->a('moderator');

If the role you're checking starts with a vowel, you might want to use the an alias method:

Bouncer::is($user)->an('admin');

For the inverse, you can also check if a user doesn't have a specific role:

Bouncer::is($user)->notA('moderator');

Bouncer::is($user)->notAn('admin');

You can check if a user has one of many roles:

Bouncer::is($user)->a('moderator', 'editor');

You can also check if the user has all of the given roles:

Bouncer::is($user)->all('editor', 'moderator');

You can also check if a user has none of the given roles:

Bouncer::is($user)->notAn('editor', 'moderator');

These checks can also be done directly on the user:

$user->is('admin');

$user->isNot('admin');

$user->isAll('editor', 'moderator');

Getting all abilities for a user

You can get all abilities for a user directly from the user model:

$abilities = $user->getAbilities();

This will return a collection of the user's abilities, including any abilities granted to the user through their roles.

Authorizing users

Authorizing users is handled directly at Laravel's Gate, or on the user model ($user->can($ability)).

For convenience, the bouncer class provides two passthrough methods:

Bouncer::allows($ability);
Bouncer::denies($ability);

These call directly into the Gate class.

Refreshing the cache

All queries executed by the bouncer are cached for the current request. If you enable cross-request caching, the cache will persist across different requests.

Whenever you need, you can fully refresh the bouncer's cache:

Bouncer::refresh();

Note: fully refreshing the cache for all users uses cache tags if they're available. Not all cache drivers support this. Refer to Laravel's documentation to see if your driver supports cache tags. If your driver does not support cache tags, calling refresh might be a little slow, depending on the amount of users in your system.

Alternatively, you can refresh the cache only for a specific user:

Bouncer::refreshFor($user);

Seeding roles and abilities

Depending on your project, you might have a set of roles and abilities that you want to pre-seed when you deploy your application. Bouncer ships with seeding functionality to make this as easy as possible.

First, register your seeding callback in your AppServiceProvider's boot method:

Bouncer::seeder(function () {
    Bouncer::allow('admin')->to(['ban-users', 'delete-posts']);
    Bouncer::allow('editor')->to('delete-posts');
});

You can also register a seeder class to be used for seeding:

Bouncer::seeder(MySeeder::class);

By default, the seed method will be used. If you need to, you can specify a different method:

Bouncer::seeder('MySeeder@run');

Once you've registered your seeder, you can run the seeds via the included artisan command:

$ php artisan bouncer:seed

Should you find a need to run the seeds from within your codebase, you can do that too:

Bouncer::seed();

Note that it's ok to run the seeds multiple times. If you make a change to your seeder, simply run the seeds again. However, do note that any information that has previously been seeded will not be automatically reverted.

Cheat Sheet

Bouncer::allow($user)->to('ban-users');
Bouncer::allow($user)->to('edit', Post::class);
Bouncer::allow($user)->to('delete', $post);

Bouncer::disallow($user)->to('ban-users');
Bouncer::disallow($user)->to('edit', Post::class);
Bouncer::disallow($user)->to('delete', $post);

Bouncer::allow('admin')->to('ban-users');
Bouncer::disallow('admin')->to('ban-users');

Bouncer::assign('admin')->to($user);
Bouncer::retract('admin')->from($user);

$check = Bouncer::is($user)->a('subscriber');
$check = Bouncer::is($user)->an('admin');
$check = Bouncer::is($user)->notA('subscriber');
$check = Bouncer::is($user)->notAn('admin');
$check = Bouncer::is($user)->a('moderator', 'editor');
$check = Bouncer::is($user)->all('moderator', 'editor');

$check = Bouncer::allows('ban-users');
$check = Bouncer::allows('edit', Post::class);
$check = Bouncer::allows('delete', $post);

$check = Bouncer::denies('ban-users');
$check = Bouncer::denies('edit', Post::class);
$check = Bouncer::denies('delete', $post);

Bouncer::cache();
Bouncer::refresh();
Bouncer::refreshFor($user);

Bouncer::seeder($callback);
Bouncer::seed();

Some of this functionality is also available directly on the user model:

$user->allow('ban-users');
$user->allow('edit', Post::class);
$user->allow('delete', $post);

$user->disallow('ban-users');
$user->disallow('edit', Post::class);
$user->disallow('delete', $post);

$user->assign('admin');
$user->retract('admin');

$check = $user->is('subscriber');
$check = $user->is('moderator', 'editor');
$check = $user->isAll('moderator', 'editor');
$check = $user->isNot('subscriber', 'moderator');

$abilities = $user->getAbilities();

License

Bouncer is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license