In my Laravel 5.8 project I am implementing a reputation system similar to Stack Exchange's one: for example, users can reply to a discussion only if they have "Level 3" reputation.
I wanted to use Laravel's policies system to build the permissions logic like so in my DiscussionPolicy file:
public function reply(User $user)
{
$result = true;
if ($user->current_level < 3) {
$result = false;
//I want to inject a custom error message here
}
return $result;
}
Everything works, but users get a 403 page without any explanation, and I wanted to find an elegant way to tell them that they cannot perform that action because they don't have Level 3.
Can you please suggest a way to inject somehow this message, to show it in my custom 403.blade.php page? I've been able to do this by flashing a variable in the session, but I don't think it's elegant, I would like to use something like a MessageBag (Illuminate\Support\MessageBag).
LARAVEL 8.x : check this answer.
Answer was given in comments, put here for reference:
Laravel provides this functionality through the deny() function in the HandlesAuthorization trait. The deny() function throws an UnauthorizedException but allows you to specify a message instead of throwing a plain exception.
Replace the return false with it and you can send custom messages to render in the exception handler.
Example:
public function reply(User $user)
{
if ($user->current_level < 3) {
$this->deny('Sorry, your level is not high enough to do that!');
// Laravel 6+ requires you to return the deny(), see following line
// return $this->deny('Sorry, your level is not high enough to do that!');
}
return true;
}