Use Policies with apiResource Routes - laravel

Question

Currently I'm writing a Laravel 5.6 REST api. Now I want to secure my endpoints:
Each user in my application has a role. Based on that the user should be able to access some endpoints and otherwise should get a 403 error. For this I would like to use Policies because, when used as middleware, they can authorize actions before the incoming request even reaches my route or controller.
I declare my endpoints like this:
Route::apiResource('me', 'UserController');
My problem now is that if I want to use Policies as middleware I have to specify the (HTTP) method like this middleware('can:update,post'). How should I do this when I use apiResource in my route declaration?
BTW: Currently I have written a FormRequest for each method (which is a pain) and do the authorization there. Can I simply return true in the authorize method after switching to Policies middleware?

Answer 1

Since you are using FormRequest::class to validate the request data, it is best practice to first check is the user is authorized to make the request. For Laravel 5.6 the cleanest solution would be to specify each policy manually in the __construct() method of your resource controller.
public function __construct()
{
$this->middleware('can:viewAny,App\Post')->only('index');
$this->middleware('can:create,App\Post')->only('store');
$this->middleware('can:view,post')->only('show');
$this->middleware('can:update,post')->only('update');
$this->middleware('can:delete,post')->only('delete');
}
If your were validating form data inside your controller instead of using FormRequest::class, a cleaner solution would be to also authorize the user inside the controller.
public function store(Request $request)
{
$this->authorize('create', Post::class);
// The user is authorized to make this request...
$request->validate([
//Validation Rules
});
// The form data has been successfully validated...
// Controller logic...
}
Since Laravel 5.7 you can do all of this using one line of code on your controller's __construct() method.
public function __construct()
{
$this->authorizeResource(Post::class, 'post');
}

Answer 2

You can define route groups, routes that have a common behaviour (middleware, prefix etc. ).
The following should work:
Route::middleware('can:update,post')->group(function () {
Route::apiResource('me', 'UserController');
//more routes
});
You can prefix routes as well:
Route::middleware('can:update,post')->group(function () {
Route::prefix('users')->group(function () {
Route::apiResource('me', 'UserController'); //Translated to ex: /users/me
Route::prefix('books')->group(function () {
Route::apiResource('{book}', 'UserController'); //Translated to ex: /users/me/book_1
});
});
});
P.S: I haven't used resources before but it should do the job