kirchdev/laravel-pbac

Policy-based access control for Laravel: roles, permissions, organisation-scoped authorization, Gate integration, and a decision cache.

v0.1.0 2026-05-21 22:55 UTC

Requires

• php: ^8.4
• illuminate/auth: ^13.0
• illuminate/contracts: ^13.0
• illuminate/database: ^13.0
• illuminate/events: ^13.0
• illuminate/support: ^13.0

Requires (Dev)

• larastan/larastan: ^3.9
• laravel/pint: ^1.29
• orchestra/testbench: ^11.0
• pestphp/pest: ^4.7
• pestphp/pest-plugin-laravel: ^4.1

MIT

• Titus Kirch

• authorization
• laravel
• roles
• permissions
• gate
• rbac
• multi-tenant
• pbac

README

🛡️ laravel-pbac

Policy-based access control for Laravel — roles, permissions, multi-tenant scoping, decision tracing, and native Gate integration.

Pbac::withOrganisation($org->id, fn () => $user->can('members.invite')); // ✅

That's it. Tenant-aware authorization in one line, native Laravel Gate semantics, no manual scope plumbing.

✨ Features

• 🎭 Roles & permissions — plain Eloquent models you can swap out for your own (UUID / ULID / int keys).
• 🏢 Organisation/tenant scoping — first-class, with a pluggable OrganisationResolver. Scopes never bleed across tenants.
• 🚪 Native Gate integration — $user->can(), Gate::allows(), Gate::inspect() all Just Work, with fallback to native Laravel gates.
• ⚡ Per-request decision cache — repeated checks within a request are free. Auto-invalidates on role/permission mutations.
• 🔍 Decision trace — opt-in audit trail of why a check returned what it did. Redacted in production by default.
• 🚀 Octane-aware — optional reset listeners on RequestTerminated, TaskTerminated, TickTerminated. No stale state across requests.
• 🧰 Heavy configuration — model / table / column / key types all overridable. UUID setups supported out of the box.
• 🧪 Library-grade — Pest 4 + Testbench, no host app needed.

📦 Installation

composer require kirchdev/laravel-pbac

Publish and run the migrations:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=pbac-migrations
php artisan migrate

Optionally publish the config:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=pbac-config

🚀 Quick start

Add the HasRoles trait to whichever model should be authorizable:

use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use KirchDev\Pbac\Traits\HasRoles;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasRoles;
}

Create roles, attach permissions, assign, check:

use KirchDev\Pbac\Models\{Permission, Role};

$role = Role::create(['name' => 'editor']);
$role->permissions()->attach(
    Permission::create(['name' => 'posts.update'])
);

$user->assignRole($role);

$user->can('posts.update');     // ✅ true
Gate::allows('posts.update');   // ✅ true (same plumbing)
Gate::inspect('posts.update');  // ✅ Response with trace (if enabled)

🏢 Multi-tenant authorization

Enable organisation scoping:

// config/pbac.php
'organisation' => [
    'enabled' => true,
    'resolver' => \KirchDev\Pbac\Organisation\DefaultOrganisationResolver::class,
],

Scope authorization for the current request:

use KirchDev\Pbac\Facades\Pbac;

Pbac::withOrganisation($organisation->id, function () use ($user) {
    $user->can('members.invite'); // checked against org-bound roles
    $user->can('billing.view');   // …same scope
});

// Global checks — no active org
Pbac::withoutOrganisation(fn () => $user->can('admin.impersonate'));

The decision cache resets on scope enter/exit, so checks never bleed across tenants.

Assigning global roles when org scoping is enabled

To prevent silent mis-targeting, role mutations by name refuse to resolve a global role unless the caller signals intent. Pass global: true, or wrap the call in Pbac::withoutOrganisation() and assign by Role instance:

$user->assignRole('superadmin', global: true);
$user->removeRole('superadmin', global: true);
$user->syncRoles(['superadmin', 'support_lead'], global: true);
$user->hasRole('superadmin', global: true);

// Equivalent for arbitrary mixed batches:
$role = Role::findOrCreate('superadmin');
Pbac::withoutOrganisation(fn () => $user->assignRole($role));

Inside an active organisation scope, $user->assignRole('owner') resolves the org-scoped row only — global rows with the same name are deliberately invisible to mutations without the explicit flag.

Bring your own resolver (e.g. backed by a tenancy package or route binding):

final class TenantRouteResolver implements \KirchDev\Pbac\Contracts\OrganisationResolver
{
    public function getOrganisationId(): int|string|null
    {
        return request()->route('organisation')?->getKey();
    }
    // …setOrganisationId, clearOrganisationId
}

Wire it via pbac.organisation.resolver.

🔍 Decision trace

Wondering why a permission check returned what it did? Turn on tracing:

// config/pbac.php
'trace' => [
    'enabled' => true,
    // null → auto: redact when APP_ENV=production AND APP_DEBUG=false
    // true|false → forced
    'redact' => null,
    'log' => [
        'enabled' => false,           // structured logging via Laravel's logger
        'channel' => null,            // null = default channel
        'level' => 'info',
        'on' => 'deny',               // or 'all'
    ],
],

Gate::inspect() carries the decision's reason code via Response::message():

$response = Gate::inspect('posts.update', $post);

$response->allowed();  // bool
$response->message();  // 'pbac.role_permission_allowed' | 'pbac.no_matching_role_permission' | …

For the human-readable trace, reach for the last decision through the Pbac facade:

use KirchDev\Pbac\Facades\Pbac;

$user->can('posts.update', $post);

Pbac::lastDecision()?->trace()->visible();   // structured entries
Pbac::lastDecision()?->trace()->formatted(); // 'role_permission_query(allowed=1, targeted=1) → role_permission_allowed'

Production redacts trace context arrays by default (step names stay; values are stripped). Opt in to the full trace per request when you need it — e.g. for an admin debug route:

Pbac::withUnredactedTrace(function () use ($user, $post) {
    $user->can('posts.update', $post);

    return Pbac::lastDecision()?->trace()->formatted(); // unredacted
});

🧹 Cascade behaviour on delete

Foreign keys are deliberately set to ON DELETE CASCADE so the indexes never carry stale grants or assignments. Mark this on your operational checklist:

When you delete…	These rows go away automatically
A Role	All role_has_permissions rows for that role + all model_has_roles rows.
A Permission	All role_has_permissions rows referencing it.
A host model (e.g. User) row	Not automatic. model_has_roles rows on the morph side are orphaned.

The host-model side is polymorphic (model_type + model_id), so no FK enforces it. Hook your model's deleting/deleted events or run a periodic prune job if user/team deletions are part of your normal flow. If you need an audit trail of historical grants/assignments, capture it before deletion — once the cascade fires, the rows are gone.

⚙️ Configuration highlights

config/pbac.php is heavily parameterised — see the file for inline docs. Most common knobs:

Key	What it controls
models.*	Swap any of the 4 Eloquent models (Role / Permission / RoleAssignment / RolePermission).
table_names.*	Override defaults if they collide with existing tables.
keys.*	id / uuid / ulid for primary keys, model morphs, target morphs, org FK. Set before migrations.
column_names.*	Pivot and morph key column names (handy for UUID setups).
organisation.enabled / .resolver	Toggle multi-tenancy, plug a custom resolver.
gate.fallback_to_laravel_gates	Whether unmatched abilities fall back to native Laravel gates.
trace.enabled	Capture per-decision explanations. Redacted in prod by default.
cache.decision_store	Decision cache backend (request by default).
register_octane_reset_listener	Reset scoped state at Octane worker boundaries.

🔁 Migrating from spatie/laravel-permission

Coming from spatie/laravel-permission? See the dedicated guide for schema, API, and multi-tenancy differences plus a copy-pasteable data-migration script: docs/migration-from-spatie-laravel-permission.md.

🧪 Testing

composer install
composer test       # Pest 4
composer pint       # Laravel Pint (test mode)
composer larastan   # Larastan / PHPStan

The test suite runs via Testbench + in-memory SQLite — no host app required.

🤝 Contributing

PRs welcome. Conventional Commits required (enforced via commitlint). Husky runs Pint + Larastan + oxlint + oxfmt on git commit, so you can mostly forget about style.

Tip

Run pnpm check:fix (Node tooling) and composer pint:fix (PHP) before pushing — CI will catch what husky missed.

🛣️ Versioning

Semantic Versioning. Release notes in CHANGELOG.md — managed by release-please.

📄 License

MIT © Titus Kirch / IT-Dienstleistungen Titus Kirch