Restrict route access to non-admin users

Question

Goal

I'm trying to create Admin route restriction for my log-in users. I've tried a check to see if my user is log-in, and also if the user type is Admin, and if they are, I want to allow them access to the admin route, otherwise, respond a 404.

---

routes.php

<!-- Route group -->
$router->group(['middleware' => 'auth'], function() {

    
    <!-- No Restriction -->
    Route::get('dashboard','WelcomeController@index');
   
    <!-- Admin Only -->
    if(Auth::check()){
        if ( Auth::user()->type == "Admin" ){

            //Report
            Route::get('report','ReportController@index');
            Route::get('report/create', array('as'=>'report.create', 'uses'=>'ReportController@create'));
            Route::post('report/store','ReportController@store');
            Route::get('report/{id}', array('before' =>'profile', 'uses'=>'ReportController@show'));
            Route::get('report/{id}/edit', 'ReportController@edit');
            Route::put('report/{id}/update', array('as'=>'report.update', 'uses'=>'ReportController@update'));
            Route::delete('report/{id}/destroy',array('as'=>'report.destroy', 'uses'=>'ReportController@destroy'));

        }
    }

});

---

Result

It's not working as I intended. It throws 404 error - even for Admin users.

Answer 1

You can use Middleware for this simple case.

1. Create middleware:

php artisan make:middleware AdminMiddleware

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use App\Article;
use Closure;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Guard;

class AdminMiddleware
{
    /**
     * The Guard implementation.
     *
     * @var Guard
     */
    protected $auth;

    /**
     * Create a new filter instance.
     *
     * @param  Guard  $auth
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct(Guard $auth)
    {
        $this->auth = $auth;
    }

    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @param  \Closure  $next
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        if ($this->auth->getUser()->type !== "admin") {
            abort(403, 'Unauthorized action.');
        }

        return $next($request);
    }
}

2. Add it to app\Http\Kernel.php:

protected $routeMiddleware = [
    'admin' => 'App\Http\Middleware\AdminMiddleware',
];

3. Use middleware in your routes:

Route::group(['middleware' => ['auth', 'admin']], function() {
    // your routes
});

Answer 2

This answer is about why your code doesn't work as expected. @limonte 's solution is correct and the best I can think of.

Your routes file is parsed to get your routes, and after that, those routes might be cached somewhere else.

Thus you shouldn't put any code that depends on the request (eg checking whether a User has sufficient rights to access a route).

In particular, you shouldn't use the following request dependent modules inside your routes.php (not exhaustive) :

• Auth
• DB or any kind of db queries that might depend on time
• Session
• Request

You should view your routes.php as part of your config, it just happens that it is written in php directly instead of some new language you have to learn.