Policies

Apiato policies are just Laravel Policies, and they function in the exact same way as Laravel policies. However, they come with additional rules and conventions specific to Apiato.

To generate new policies you may use the apiato:generate:policy interactive command:

php artisan apiato:generate:policy

Rules

• All Policies:
  • MUST be placed in the app/Containers/{section}/{container}/Policies directory.
  • MUST extend the App\Ship\Parents\Policies\Policy class.
    • The parent extension SHOULD be aliased as ParentPolicy.
  • SHOULD be named after the model they are associated with, followed by the Policy suffix. For instance, UserPolicy.php.

Folder Structure

The highlighted section showcases the policy registration point:

app
└── Containers
    └── Section
        └── Container
            ├── Policies
            │   ├── UserPolicy.php
            │   └── ...
            └── Providers
                ├── AuthServiceProvider.php
                └── ...

Code Example

Policies are defined exactly as you would define them in Laravel.

Registering Policies

Once the policy class has been created, it needs to be registered. Registering policies is how we can inform Apiato which policy to use when authorizing actions against a given model type.

Registering policies can be done by adding them to the policies array in the App\Containers\{Section}\{Container}\Providers\AuthServiceProvider class.

use ...
use App\Ship\Parents\Providers\AuthServiceProvider as ParentAuthProvider;

class AuthServiceProvider extends ParentAuthProvider
{
    protected $policies = [
        Post::class => PostPolicy::class,
    ];
}

To generate an event service provider you may use the apiato:generate:provider interactive command:

php artisan apiato:generate:provider

Remember to also register the AuthServiceProvider in the container's MainServiceProvider:

use ...
use App\Ship\Parents\Providers\MainServiceProvider as ParentMainServiceProvider;

class MainServiceProvider extends ParentMainServiceProvider
{
    protected array $serviceProviders = [
        AuthServiceProvider::class,
    ];
}

Policy Auto-Discovery

Apiato offers a policy auto-discovery feature that eliminates the need for manual registration of model policies. This automatic discovery process relies on adhering to standard Apiato naming conventions for policies.

By following the rules outlined above, you allow Apiato to automatically discover your policies.

To summarize:

• Policies must be stored within the app/Containers/{section}/{container}/Policies directory.
• The policy name should mirror the corresponding model's name while appending a Policy suffix. For instance, a User model corresponds to a UserPolicy policy class.

Policy Registration Flow

In case you are going to register your policies manually, and don't want to use the auto-discovery feature, you may want to understand the policy registration process. Here is a breakdown of the registration flow.

Consider the following folder structure:

app
└── Containers
    └── Section
        └── Container
            ├── Policies
            │   ├── DemoPolicy.php ─►─┐
            │   └── ...               │                                                                                         
            └── Providers             ▼
                ├── AuthServiceProvider.php ─────────►───────┐
                ├── MainServiceProvider.php ◄─registered─in─◄┘
                └── ...

The following diagram illustrates the registration flow of policies in the above folder structure:

Helper Methods

Available since Core v8.7.0

All models are equipped with the owns and isOwnedBy methods, made available through the Apiato\Core\Traits\CanOwnTrait trait. These methods offer a convenient way to determine if a model is owned by another model or if a model owns another model.

These methods support all types of relationships, as demonstrated below:

// Check if a user owns a post
$user->owns($post);

// Check if a post is owned by a user
$post->isOwnedBy($user);