Extending

##Adding fields to your models

You can add your own migrations to make changes to the role/permission tables, as you would for adding/changing fields in any other tables in your Laravel project.

Following that, you can add any necessary logic for interacting with those fields into your custom/extended Models.

Here is an example of adding a 'description' field to your Permissions and Roles tables:

php artisan make:migration add_description_to_permissions_tables

And in the migration file:

public function up()
{
    Schema::table('permissions', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->string('description')->nullable();
    });
    Schema::table('roles', function (Blueprint $table) {
        $table->string('description')->nullable();
    });
}

Semi-Related article: Adding Extra Fields To Pivot Table (video)

##Adding a description to roles and permissions

A common question is "how do I add a description for my roles or permissions?".

By default, a 'description' field is not included in this package, to keep the model memory usage low, because not every app has a need for displayed descriptions.

But you are free to add it yourself if you wish. You can use the example above.

##Multiple Language Descriptions

If you need your 'description' to support multiple languages, simply use Laravel's built-in language features. You might prefer to rename the 'description' field in these migration examples from 'description' to 'description_key' for clarity.

##Extending User Models

Laravel's authorization features are available in models which implement the Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\Access\Authorizable trait.

By default Laravel does this in \App\Models\User by extending Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User, in which the trait and Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Access\Authorizable contract are declared.

If you are creating your own User models and wish Authorization features to be available, you need to implement Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Access\Authorizable in one of those ways as well.

##Child User Models

Due to the nature of polymorphism and Eloquent's hard-coded mapping of model names in the database, setting relationships for child models that inherit permissions of the parent can be difficult (even near impossible depending on app requirements, especially when attempting to do inverse mappings). However, one thing you might consider if you need the child model to never have its own permissions/roles but to only use its parent's permissions/roles, is to override the getMorphClass method on the model.

eg: This could be useful, but only if you're willing to give up the child's independence for roles/permissions:

    public function getMorphClass()
    {
        return 'users';
    }

##Extending Role and Permission Models

If you are extending or replacing the role/permission models, you will need to specify your new models in this package's config/permission.php file.

First be sure that you've published the configuration file (see the Installation instructions), and edit it to update the models.role and models.permission values to point to your new models.

Note the following requirements when extending/replacing the models:

##Extending

If you need to EXTEND the existing Role or Permission models note that:

• Your Role model needs to extend the Spatie\Permission\Models\Role model
• Your Permission model needs to extend the Spatie\Permission\Models\Permission model
• You need to update config/permission.php to specify your namespaced model

eg:

<?php
namespace App\Models;
use Spatie\Permission\Models\Role as SpatieRole;

class Role extends SpatieRole
{
    // You might set a public property like guard_name or connection, or override other Eloquent Model methods/properties
}

##Replacing

In MOST cases you will only EXTEND the models as described above. In the rare case that you have need to REPLACE the existing Role or Permission models you need to keep the following things in mind:

• If you are REPLACING and NOT EXTENDING the existing Model, do the following (and do NOT extend as described above):
• Your Role model needs to implement the Spatie\Permission\Contracts\Role contract
• Your Permission model needs to implement the Spatie\Permission\Contracts\Permission contract
• You need to update config/permission.php to specify your namespaced model