Implementing Dual-Level Roles in Laravel App

Question

I'm currently developing an application using Laravel and have encountered a challenge with implementing a two-tier role system. I'm using the laravel-permission package but am struggling to configure it to suit my specific needs. Here's a breakdown of the problem:

Background:

My application needs to support two distinct types of roles:

• Website Roles: These are global roles applicable across the entire platform, such as website admin and website manager.
• Company Roles: These are specific to each registered company using the app, like company admin, company manager, etc.

The Challenge:

I'm able to use the teams feature in laravel-permission to handle company roles effectively. Each 'team' in this context represents a company, and I can assign roles and permissions within each company. However, the difficulty arises with the website roles. I need a way to manage these website-wide roles independently from the company-specific roles.

What I've Tried:

• I've set up company roles using the teams feature in laravel-permission, which works well for that part.
• I'm stuck on implementing the website roles, as they don't fit into the teams feature framework.

What I Need Help With:

I'm looking for advice or suggestions on how to implement this two-tier role system effectively. Specifically, I need guidance on:

1. Managing website roles separately from company roles.
2. Best practices for structuring this kind of dual-level role system in Laravel.
3. Any examples or experiences you may have with a similar setup.

Answer 1

With your use case you can try a different approach to keep things a little bit more flexible here is what you could do to handle this in a much cleaner way:

Separate Website Roles and Company Roles

Website Roles:

Create a separate table for website roles, distinct from the teams and roles used for company-specific roles. create a table with columns like 'id', 'name', and 'guard_name'. The 'guard_name' field is important as it helps distinguish between website and company roles.

Company Roles:

Continue using the teams feature in laravel-permission for company roles. Each team represents a company, and roles within teams represent company-specific roles. This aligns with your current setup.

Update config/auth.php

'guards' => [
    'web' => [
        'driver' => 'session',
        'provider' => 'users',
    ],

    'api' => [
        'driver' => 'token',
        'provider' => 'users',
    ],

    'website' => [
        'driver' => 'session',
        'provider' => 'website_users',
    ],

    'website-api' => [
        'driver' => 'token',
        'provider' => 'website_users',
    ],
],

Define Relations in User.php Model

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasRoles;

    // Existing code...

    public function websiteRoles()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(WebsiteRole::class);
    }

    public function teams()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(Team::class);
    }
}

Here's what you can do next:

Create middleware for website and company authorization. This middleware will check the user's roles based on the guard and grant/deny access accordingly.

Handle access control in your controllers or policies by checking both website and company roles. You may need to create custom policies or use conditional logic in your controllers to manage access based on the user's roles.

While this might not be a 100% accurate solution to your use-case but this should be sufficient to show you a way out.