Laravel-5 adding hasRole method to Auth
Stefan Bogdanescu
Founder & Senior Architect · 2026-06-29
Title: Extending Laravel-5 Auth Middleware with hasRole Method
Body:
Incorporating authentication mechanisms into your Laravel application is essential for ensuring user permissions are properly managed. While Laravel offers a robust and convenient framework, it may not always cater to your specific business needs. In this blog post, we will explore how to extend the default Laravel-5.1 Auth middleware to include a new method called hasRole.
Firstly, let's break down what you need in order to add the new method `hasRole` to Auth:
1. Understand your business logic requirements and how you want to manage user roles.
2. Decipher which method you wish to create as a part of the extended middleware. In this case, we will add `hasRole`.
3. Create or utilize an appropriate service provider for your Laravel application. This will help in registering and managing your new middleware effectively.
4. Understand the flow of your authentication process, including how you want it to function with your custom middleware.
5. Define your class hierarchy and ensure that it aligns well with other classes used by Laravel's default Auth middleware implementation.
6. Implement any additional features or methods as per your business requirements.
7. Test the new functionality to ensure it is functioning as expected.
8. Integrate the new middleware into your Laravel application routes file.
9. Verify that your user roles are being properly checked and handled by your extended Auth middleware.
Now, let's dive deeper:
- Routes file example: In this case, you may modify your existing routes file to include the new role-based authentication group:
/* Administrator Routes */
Route::group(['namespace' => 'Admin', 'middleware' => 'timesheets.admin:Administrator'], function()
{
Route::get('home', 'AdminController@index');
});
<?php
namespace App\Http\Middleware\Auth;
use Closure;
use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Guard;
class AdminAuthenticate
{
/**
* 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, $role)
{
if ($this->auth->guest()) {
if ($request->ajax()) {
return response('Unauthorized.', 401);
} else {
return redirect()->guest('login');
}
}
if (auth()->check() && auth()->user()->hasRole($role)) {
return $next($request);
}
}
}