Laravel Eloquent how to limit access to logged in user only - mysql

Question

I have a small app where users create things that are assigned to them.
There are multiple users but all the things are in the same table.
I show the things belonging to a user by retrieving all the things with that user's id but nothing would prevent a user to see another user's things by manually typing the thing's ID in the URL.
Also when a user wants to create a new thing, I have a validation rule set to unique but obviously if someone else has a thing with the same name, that's not going to work.
Is there a way in my Eloquent Model to specify that all interactions should only be allowed for things belonging to the logged in user?
This would mean that when a user tries to go to /thing/edit and that he doesn't own that thing he would get an error message.

Answer 1

The best way to do this would be to check that a "thing" belongs to a user in the controller for the "thing".
For example, in the controller, you could do this:
// Assumes that the controller receives $thing_id from the route.
$thing = Things::find($thing_id); // Or how ever you retrieve the requested thing.
// Assumes that you have a 'user_id' column in your "things" table.
if( $thing->user_id == Auth::user()->id ) {
//Thing belongs to the user, display thing.
} else {
// Thing does not belong to the current user, display error.
}
The same could also be accomplished using relational tables.
// Get the thing based on current user, and a thing id
// from somewhere, possibly passed through route.
// This assumes that the controller receives $thing_id from the route.
$thing = Users::find(Auth::user()->id)->things()->where('id', '=', $thing_id)->first();
if( $thing ) {
// Display Thing
} else {
// Display access denied error.
}
The 3rd Option:
// Same as the second option, but with firstOrFail().
$thing = Users::find(Auth::user()->id)->things()->where('id', '=', $thing_id)->firstOrFail();
// No if statement is needed, as the app will throw a 404 error
// (or exception if errors are on)
Correct me if I am wrong, I am still a novice with laravel myself. But I believe this is what you are looking to do. I can't help all that much more without seeing the code for your "thing", the "thing" route, or the "thing" controller or how your "thing" model is setup using eloquent (if you use eloquent).

Answer 2

I think the functionality you're looking for can be achieved using Authority (this package is based off of the rails CanCan gem by Ryan Bates): https://github.com/machuga/authority-l4.
First, you'll need to define your authority rules (see the examples in the docs) and then you can add filters to specific routes that have an id in them (edit, show, destroy) and inside the filter you can check your authority permissions to determine if the current user should be able to access the resource in question.