LARAVEL Authentication & Security Flashcards

What is the role of Gates in Laravel's authorization system?

Answer: To define simple closure-based authorization rules for actions

Gates are closures registered in a service provider that determine whether a user is authorized to perform a given action.

What is a Laravel Policy used for?

Answer: Organizing authorization logic for a specific Eloquent model into a dedicated class

Policies are classes that group authorization methods for a model, providing a clean place to define who can view, update, or delete model instances.

Which Artisan command generates a new policy class in Laravel?

Answer: php artisan make:policy PostPolicy --model=Post

php artisan make:policy generates a policy class, and the --model flag pre-fills CRUD authorization method stubs for the given model.

Where do you typically register Policies in a Laravel application?

Answer: In the $policies array inside App\Providers\AuthServiceProvider

The AuthServiceProvider's $policies array maps Eloquent models to their corresponding policy classes for automatic discovery.

What does the `@can` Blade directive do in Laravel templates?

Answer: Renders content only if the authenticated user is authorized for the given ability

The @can directive calls the authorization gate and only renders the enclosed Blade content when the user passes the authorization check.

What is the purpose of the `signed` middleware in Laravel?

Answer: To validate that incoming URLs have a valid cryptographic signature

The signed middleware ensures the URL contains a valid HMAC signature generated by URL::signedRoute(), protecting against URL tampering.