Action filter for each method in Laravel controller

Question

I am building quite an extensive app for a client and I will have to produce some kind of a group permission control. I decided to go with Cartalyst and their Sentry package.
So far so good!

Now the problem I am having is, what is the best way of detecting a user group permission, since there are more than just one, so I can't just use one filter and be done with it.

For example, I would do something like this:

For pages that need admin-level access

Route::group(array('before' => 'is_admin'), function()
{
       Route::get('admin', array('as'=>'admin', 'uses'=>'admin@index'));
       // Other methods that require admin-level access
});

For pages that need moretaor-level access and so on..

Route::group(array('before' => 'is_moderator'), function()

    {
           Route::get('orodja/plosca', array('as'=>'moderator', 'uses'=>'moderator@index'));
           // Other methods that require moderator-level access
    });

The problem I'm having with this approach is, that I would need to define a new route for every controller action and this really does not look like best practice to me.

Next I thought about registering all controllers with Controller::detect() and make them REST-full but I here the problem is, that I can apply filter only to the constructor method of a controller and not to a single action. What if I have method with different access-level in one controller..?

So my question is: What is the best way of getting around this problem and is there any way to apply a action filter to a single controller method, rather than to a controller constructor.

Thanks and sorry for my english!

Answer 1

You can attach a filter to all requests that start with a given URI (see the official doc on filters)

Route::filter('pattern: admin/*', 'auth');

Or you can attach a filter only to some actions within your controller:

$this->filter('before', 'auth')->only(array('index', 'list'));

On a side note, you don't have to create a route for every controller action you have. If you register your controller with Route::controller('admin::home'); it will fire automatically.

Another option would be that you define only one auth filter for all roles, then check for the different roles within the filter.