Laravel 5.1 index & create authorization

Question

I'm using Laravel 5.1's authorization features, documented here. My controllers implement AuthorizesRequests and I have my policies set up connecting policies to their models to create an ACL of sorts. In my controllers, I'm checking for authorization in each method. For example, in an 'AgencyController' the 'update' method calls $this->authorize($agency), which then checks my AgencyPolicy's update method to know rather or not the current user is allowed to update the agency, just as described in the documentation. This works the way I want it to.

However, what I can't seem to figure out is how to use authorization for other methods like index() and create() where there isn't a specific model being used. Calling $this->authorize('index') seems to return false, even if I have an index($user) function in my policy class that only returns true.

I'm new to using Laravel's authorization helpers, so I might be going about this wrong or missing something obvious. Any help pointing me in the right direction would be gretaly appreciated!

Answer 1

You have to pass it the class name of the model you're checking:

$this->authorize('index', Agency::class);

Answer 2

With some help from someone in the Laravel slack group I was able to find the answer to this myself.

Without an instance of the model, the authorize() calls couldn't map to the correct policies. But by simply passing the class to them, it is able to and works.

For example, instead of calling $this->authorize('index') in my controller's index method, I'm now calling $this->authorize('index', Agency::class) to give it the correct model to use.