Shield

The easiest and most intuitive way to add access management to your Filament panels.

[!IMPORTANT] This iteration is a complete rewrite from versions 3.x and 4.x-beta and is not backward compatible. Please refer to the Upgrade section on how to proceed.

Features

• 🛡️ Complete Authorization Management
  • 📦 Resource Permissions
  • 📄 Page Permissions
  • 🧩 Widget Permissions
• 🛠️ Custom (ad-hoc) permissions
• 🤖 Automatic Policy Generation
  • 📜 Default Policy methods for Filament Resources
  • 🏷️ Per Resource Policy definition
  • 🔗 Third-party resource policy & permission generation
• 👑 Super admin role or gate interception
• 👤 Optional baseline panel user role
• 🔄 Multi-tenancy Support
• 🔍 Entity discovery (across all panels if enabled)
• 🌐 Localized permission & entity labels
• 🌱 Seeder generation (roles + direct permissions)
• 🎨 Intuitive UI
  • 🖌️ Publish & customize the built-in resource
• ⚡ Fine-grained CLI tooling with safe prohibiting

Installation

1. Install Package

2. Configure Auth Provider

1. Publish the config and set your auth provider model.

2. Add the HasRoles trait to your auth provider model:

3. Setup Shield

Run the setup command (it is interactive and smart):

Usage & Configuration

The package comes with a sensible default configuration that should work for most applications. You can customize the configuration by modifying it to fit your needs. The following sections explain the various configuration options available.

Permissions

You can customize how permission keys are generated to match your preferred naming conventions and organizational standards. Shield uses these settings from the filament-shield.php config file when creating permission names from your {Resources|Pages|Widgets}.

Configuration

Separator & case compatibility: The separator must not conflict with the case format's own delimiter. Using _ with snake/lower_snake/upper_snake, or - with kebab, will throw an InvalidArgumentException since it would be impossible to distinguish the affix from the subject in the resulting permission key.

Case

Shield formats permission keys using the specified case style. The available options are:

• camel
• kebab
• snake
• pascal (default)
• upper_snake

Customize permission key composition

You can customize how permission keys are generated by providing your own callback to buildPermissionKeyUsing in your AppServiceProvider's boot() method. The callback receives the following parameters:

• string $entity: The FQCN of the entity for resources/pages/widgets, or 'custom' for custom permissions.
• ?string $affix: The action or method name (e.g., 'viewAny', 'create'). null for custom permissions.
• string $subject: The subject or resource name (e.g., 'Post', 'Dashboard'). For custom permissions, this is the raw permission key as defined in config.
• string $case: The case format specified in the config (e.g., 'pascal').
• string $separator: The separator specified in the config (e.g., ':').

Return a string to use as the permission key, or null to fall back to the default permission key builder. This allows you to selectively override specific entity types while keeping the default behavior for others:

• Now let's consider an example where we want to handle Resource entities that handle the same Model or Models with the same name but with different namespaces and directory structures. The Filament Demo has two resources with the same name that handle two different models:

  • App\Filament\Resources\Blog\Categories\CategoryResource that handles App\Models\Blog\Category
  • App\Filament\Resources\Shop\Categories\CategoryResource that handles App\Models\Shop\Category

  By default Shield will generate the same permission keys for both resources which can cause conflicts. To avoid this we can customize the permission key composition to include the navigation group of the resource as part of the permission key. Here's how you can do it:

  Now when you run the shield:generate command, it will generate distinct permission keys for each CategoryResource based on their navigation groups:

  • For Blog's CategoryResource since its navigation group is Blog:
  • ViewAny:BlogCategories
  • View:BlogCategories
  • Create:BlogCategories
  • Update:BlogCategories
  • Delete:BlogCategories
  • For Shop's CategoryResource since it uses a cluster and its navigation group is blank, so it will just use the resource subject configured in the config filament-shield.resources.subject which is model by default:
  • ViewAny:Categories
  • View:Categories
  • Create:Categories
  • Update:Categories
  • Delete:Categories

This approach ensures that each resource has a unique set of permission keys, preventing any conflicts and allowing for more granular access control. You can of course extract the logic to a separate class or function if it gets too complex, but this should give you a good starting point.

• Returning null for default fallback: You can return null from the closure to let the default builder handle specific entity types. This is useful when you only want to customize certain entities (e.g., custom permissions from Keycloak) while letting everything else use the standard formatting:

Policies

Shield automatically generates policies for your Resources' Models.

Configuration

Policy Placement

Shield writes each policy where it belongs for the model that owns it; how policies are resolved at runtime stays in your hands. The rule is applied per model:

1. Models under app/Models — the policy goes into policies.path, keeping any nesting (app/Models/Blog/Post.php → app/Policies/Blog/PostPolicy.php).
2. Vendor models — the policy goes flat into policies.path. Shield never writes inside vendor/, since Composer wipes it.
3. Models in any other Models directory (modules, plugins, DDD domains, panel-organized trees) — the policy goes into a sibling Policies directory beside the model, exactly where Laravel's policy discovery looks.
4. Models outside any Models directory (legacy app/User.php layouts) — the policy goes flat into policies.path.

Because the rule is per-model, mixed layouts work with zero configuration: a default app/Models tree, an app-modules/ directory, and vendor models can coexist in one app. Grouping models inside app/Models (e.g. app/Models/Shared, app/Models/Admin) mirrors the grouping into your policy tree under policies.path; grouping them outside it (e.g. app/Filament/Admin/Models) yields sibling placement that Laravel discovers on its own — the directory choice selects the trade-off.

Skipping Provided Policies

When a model's policy already resolves to something other than the policy Shield would generate — for example a policy bundled with an installed plugin, or one you registered yourself — shield:generate skips that model and reports which policy provides it. Permissions are still generated.

Ownership is decided structurally, with two symmetric recipes and no flags:

• Opting a model out — put your policy anywhere you like, register it with Gate::policy(), and delete the file Shield generated. Shield treats it like a plugin-provided policy and backs off that model for good, while still generating its permissions.
• Taking over a provided policy — create a policy class at Shield's conventional location for the model (see the placement table above), for example with php artisan make:policy. Once that class exists, the next shield:generate fills it and maintains it from then on. Register it with Gate::policy() so it wins over the plugin's — explicit registrations beat discovered ones.

The --ignore-existing-policies flag is an unrelated axis: it prevents rewriting any policy file that already exists, protecting manual edits. The skip rule decides whether a model is Shield's to generate for; the flag then decides whether an existing file may be rewritten.

One caveat: the check runs in the console, so registrations that only happen conditionally at runtime may not be visible while generating. The worst case is an extra generated file that never resolves — Shield itself never registers anything without being asked.

Methods

Each policy includes methods defined in the policies.methods config. You can customize this list to fit your application's needs. Since Filament Resources typically use a standard set of methods, the default configuration should suffice for most applications. If you have specific resources that require additional methods, you can easily add them to the list. However, it would be best to only include methods that are commonly used across your resources and define any resource-specific methods in the resources.manage config section. This approach keeps your policies clean and relevant to your application's requirements.

Merge

When policies.merge is set to true, Shield will combine the global methods defined in policies.methods with any resource-specific methods you define in resources.manage. This ensures that each resource's policy includes both the standard methods and any additional ones you need for that particular resource.

Single Parameter Methods

Some policy methods only require the user instance as a parameter (e.g., viewAny, create). These are defined in policies.single_parameter_methods. Shield will generate these methods accordingly in the policies. When you add new methods or resource-specific methods, ensure to update this list if they also only require the user instance. This helps maintain consistency and clarity in your policy definitions.

Policy Enforcement

Sibling-placed policies and the default flat App\Policies are found by Laravel's policy discovery on their own. The placements marked "No" in the table above — nested under policies.path, a custom policies.path, and centralized vendor-model policies — are invisible to it and need registration. The simplest way is Shield's opt-in enforcement hook, in a service provider's boot() method:

At Filament::serving time, this registers the Shield-generated policy for each of your resources' models via Gate::policy(). It plays by strict rules:

• The condition is evaluated lazily on each request, so a closure can gate enforcement per panel or per tenant: FilamentShield::enforcePolicies(fn (): bool => Filament::getCurrentPanel()?->getId() === 'admin').
• Models listed in $except are left alone: FilamentShield::enforcePolicies(except: [Post::class]).
• Existing explicit Gate::policy() registrations — yours or a plugin's — always win, regardless of boot order.
• Only Shield-generated policy classes that actually exist are registered; your custom-located policies are never touched, and nothing is ever unregistered or overridden.

For full manual control, register policies yourself:

Tip Alternatively, you can teach Laravel's discovery your convention with Gate::guessPolicyNamesUsing(). If you use a custom policies.path, adapt the callback to your configured namespace, since discovery never looks inside a custom path on its own:

One boundary to be aware of: resolving different policies per panel for the same model is conditional resolution, which belongs in your own registration logic (a conditioned enforcePolicies() closure only gates whether Shield's policies are enforced — it does not swap policies per panel).

Resources

Shield derives resource permission keys from configured policy methods. Since Filament Resources' authorization is handled via policies, generated permissions align with policy methods.

Configuration

Subject

You can customize the subject used for resource permissions by setting the subject key in the resources configuration. The subject can be set to either class or model (default is model).

Manage

You can define resource-specific policy methods in the resources.manage configuration. This allows you to tailor the permissions for individual resources (in-app or third-party) based on their unique requirements. When you specify methods here, Shield will generate permissions for these methods in addition to the global methods defined in policies.methods, provided that policies.merge is set to true. This ensures that each resource has a comprehensive set of permissions that reflect both standard and resource-specific actions.

Exclude

You can exclude specific resources from permission generation by listing them in the resources.exclude configuration. This is useful for resources that should always be accessible or do not require permission checks. When a resource is excluded, Shield will skip generating permissions and policy for it.

Pages & Widgets

Both pages and widgets in Filament follow a similar permission model. By default, they require view permissions. You can customize their behavior in the configuration, including subject, prefix, exclusions, and enforcement traits.

Configuration

Pages

Widgets

Options

Permission Enforcement

Use the appropriate Shield trait to automatically enforce permissions. When applied, these traits ensure:

• Navigation or rendering is hidden if the user lacks permission.
• Access to the page/widget is restricted.

Pages

Widgets

Custom Permissions

Most of the time you will have some ad-hoc permissions that don't fit into the Resource, Page, or Widget categories, or you might not want a policy method for them. You can define these under custom_permissions in the config:

They appear in the Role Resource's Custom Permissions tab when enabled. To enable the tab, set shield_resource.tabs.custom_permissions to true in the config.

Formatting

By default, custom permission keys are formatted according to the configured case setting. When a custom permission contains the configured separator, each segment is formatted independently. For example, with case => 'snake' and separator => ':':

• 'view system log' → view_system_log
• 'View:SystemLog' → view:system_log

Shield's formatter is fault-tolerant — it normalizes input regardless of the original format (snake_case, kebab-case, camelCase, PascalCase, UPPER_SNAKE_CASE) before applying the target case conversion.

Externally Managed Permissions

If your custom permissions come from external sources like Terraform, Keycloak, or other identity providers and must retain their exact key names, set format_custom_permission_keys to false:

With this setting, custom permission keys are stored exactly as defined — no case conversion is applied. This does not affect resource, page, or widget permissions, which are always formatted.

Alternatively, you can use the buildPermissionKeyUsing closure for more granular control — see Customize permission key composition.

Retrieving the Permission Catalogue

Shield can tell you every permission key it manages for a panel — without touching the database. getEntitiesPermissions() returns a flat, de-duplicated array of the keys for all four entity types, formatted per your Permission Builder settings:

• resource permissions, respecting policies.methods, merge, and your resources.manage / exclude configuration
• page and widget permissions, respecting their prefix and exclude settings
• custom permissions

The catalogue is resolved for the current panel — inside a panel request that's already set; in artisan commands, jobs, or tests, set it first as shown above. Results are memoized for the lifetime of the request.

This method only reads — it never creates permission rows. Its typical job is powering your own synchronization, for example a deploy-time seeder that guarantees every permission exists:

or the reverse — auditing drift by diffing the catalogue against what's in your database or an externally managed store.

When you need more than the keys — labels, or entity-to-permission grouping — use the granular getters instead: FilamentShield::getResources(), getPages(), getWidgets(), and getCustomPermissions() each return their entities keyed by class, with a permissions array of key => label pairs.

Note: prior to v4.3.1 this method returned page and widget class names in place of their permission keys. If you rely on it, require at least that version.

Users (Assigning Roles to Users)

Shield does not come with a way to assign roles to your users out of the box; however, you can easily assign roles to your users using Filament's Forms Select or CheckboxList component. Inside your users Resource's form, add one of these components and configure them as needed:

1. Without Tenancy

2. With Tenancy

You can find out more about these components in the Filament Docs

• Select
• CheckboxList

Shield Plugin & Resource

The plugin provides several methods to handle resource-related customizations and overrides without publishing the resource. You can use the plugin as follows:

Navigation

You may use the following methods to customize the navigation of the RoleResource:

Labels

You may use the following methods to customize the labels of the RoleResource:

Global Search

You may use the following methods to customize the global search related functionality of the RoleResource:

Parent Resource

You may use the following method to set a parent resource for the RoleResource:

Tenancy

You may use the following methods to customize the tenancy related functionality of the RoleResource:

Layout Customization

1. You can easily customize the Grid, Section and CheckboxList's columns() and columnSpan() without publishing the resource.

   

2. You can also make the resource tab to have a simple view like the other tabs by using the following method:

3. When you have localization enabled and setup and you want the permission labels to react to your application's chosen locale/language you can use the following method:

Commands

Prohibited Commands

Since almost all Shield commands are destructive and can cause data loss, they can be prohibited by calling the prohibit method of the command as follows in a service provider's boot() method:

Core Commands

Generate Command Options (recap)

Seeder Command Options (recap)

Custom Super Admin Creation

When no user exists yet, shield:super-admin prompts for a name, email, and password. If your User model requires more than that, register a closure via SuperAdminCommand::createSuperAdminUsing() in a service provider's boot() method and the command will call it instead:

The closure is resolved through the container and should return an Authenticatable instance. Returning null deliberately falls back to the built-in interactive prompts, so a closure can hand control back whenever it decides not to create the user itself.

Keep in mind that the closure replaces Shield's built-in email and password validation entirely — validate whatever you collect, and never hardcode credentials in it. This hook is meant for bootstrapping development and staging environments only; in production, create the super admin through a seeder or a deliberate one-time run, and pair the hook with SuperAdminCommand::prohibit($this->app->isProduction()) in the same boot() as shown above.

Localization

Shield supports multiple languages out of the box. When enabled, you can provide translated labels for permissions to create a more localized experience for your app's users.

Configuration

How It Works

Shield uses a fallback chain for resolving permission labels:

1. User's translation file (when localization.enabled = true)
   • Checks lang/{locale}/{key}.php where {key} is your configured localization key
2. Package's default translations
   • Falls back to resource_permission_prefixes_labels for standard affixes (view, create, update, etc.)
3. Headline fallback
   • Converts the key to a readable format (e.g., force_delete_any → "Force Delete Any")

Generating Translation Files

The easiest way to create a translation file is using the shield:translation command:

This generates a file at lang/en/shield-permissions.php containing all permission labels:

Translation Keys

All translation keys are in snake_case format:

Default Package Translations

Shield includes translations for standard resource affixes in 32 languages. When localization.enabled = false, the package automatically uses these translations for affixes like view, create, update, delete, etc.

For entity labels (Resources, Pages, Widgets), Filament's entity related methods are used (getModelLabel(), getTitle(), getHeading(), etc.).

Upgrade

Upgrading from 3.x|4.0.0-Beta* versions to 4.x requires careful consideration due to significant changes in the package's architecture and functionality. Here are the key steps and considerations for a successful upgrade:

1. Backup Your Data: Before making any changes, ensure you have a complete backup of your database and application files. This is crucial in case you need to revert to the previous version.
2. Remove Config and Resource: Delete the existing filament-shield.php config file and the published RoleResource if you have done so. This is important to avoid conflicts with the new configuration and resource structure.
3. Update Composer: Run composer require bezhansalleh/filament-shield to update the package to the latest version.

4. Publish New Config and Resource: Publish the new configuration file and the RoleResource using the following commands:

5. Adjust Configuration: Review and adjust the new filament-shield.php configuration file to match your application's requirements. Pay special attention to the new options and defaults that may differ from the previous version.
6. HasShieldPermissions Contract is Deprecated: If you have implemented the HasShieldPermissions contract in your resources, consult Resources sections on how to migrate. If you leave it as is, it will be ignored.

7. Clean Slate or Perserve: Decide whether to start fresh with a clean slate or preserve existing roles and permissions.

   1. Clean Slate: If you choose to start fresh, you can run the following command to and follow along to set up the package from scratch.

   2. Preserve Existing Data: If you want to keep your existing roles and permissions intact, then follow these steps:

      1. Add the following code to your AppServiceProvider's boot() method to perserve the the previous versions(3.x|4.x-Beta*) permission pattern:

      2. If you have used the configurePermissionIdentifierUsing() method to customize the permission key composition, then adjust the logic for resources above to match your custom logic.

      3. Running the shield:generate command

         • If your policies are altered or customized, you may need to run the generate command carefully per resource or set of resources to avoid any unwanted side effects. Then manually review and adjust the customized policies as needed. :

         • If you haven't customized your policies then run the following command to ensure that your policies are up to date with the latest version of Shield:

         • If you have tenancy enabled in your panels and you want to generate the tenancy relationships, you can add the --relationships flag to the above commands.
      4. Review and adjust the generated policies and permissions as needed.
8. Test Thoroughly: After completing the upgrade, thoroughly test your application to ensure that all functionalities related to roles, permissions, and access control are working as expected. Pay special attention to any custom implementations you may have had in place.

Translations

Publish the translations using:

Testing

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Security Vulnerabilities

Please review our security policy on how to report security vulnerabilities.

Credits

• Bezhan Salleh
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.