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Tecnico

This package supports Laravel 6 and above.

Tecnico is the fastest and easiest method to add a User / Group association with Invites to your Laravel 6+ project.

Installation

composer require ricasolucoes/tecnico

The Tecnico Facade will be auto discovered by Laravel automatically.

Configuration

To publish Tecnico's configuration and migration files, run the vendor:publish command.

This will create a tecnico.php in your config directory. The default configuration should work just fine for you, but you can take a look at it, if you want to customize the table / model names Tecnico will use.

User relation to groups

Run the migration command, to generate all tables needed for Tecnico. If your users are stored in a different table other than users be sure to modify the published migration.

After the migration, 3 new tables will be created:

• groups — stores group records
• group_user — stores many-to-many relations between users and groups
• group_invites — stores pending invites for email addresses to groups

You will also notice that a new column current_group_id has been added to your users table. This column will define the Group, the user is currently assigned to.

Models

Group

Create a Group model inside app/Group.php using the following example:

The Group model has two main attributes:

• owner_id — Reference to the User model that owns this Group.
• name — Human readable name for the Group.

The owner_id is an optional attribute and is nullable in the database.

When extending TecnicoGroup, remember to change the group_model variable in config/tecnico.php to your new model. For instance: 'group_model' => App\Group::class

User

Add the UserHasGroups trait to your existing User model:

This will enable the relation with Group and add the following methods groups(), ownedGroups() currentGroup(), invites(), isGroupOwner(), isOwnerOfGroup($group), attachGroup($group, $pivotData = []), detachGroup($group), attachGroups($groups), detachGroups($groups), switchGroup($group) within your User model.

Don't forget to dump composer autoload

Middleware

If you would like to use the middleware to protect to current group owner then just add the middleware provider to your app\Http\Kernel.php file.

Afterwards you can use the groupowner middleware in your routes file like so.

Now only if the authenticated user is the owner of the current group can access that route.

This middleware is aimed to protect routes where only the owner of the group can edit/create/delete that model

And you are ready to go.

Usage

Scaffolding

The easiest way to give your new Laravel project Group abilities is by using the make:tecnico command.

This command will create all views, routes and controllers to make your new project group-ready.

Out of the box, the following parts will be created for you:

• Group listing
• Group creation / editing / deletion
• Invite new members to groups

Imagine it as a the make:auth command for Tecnico.

To get started, take a look at the new installed /groups route in your project.

Basic concepts

Let's start by creating two different Groups.

Now thanks to the UserHasGroups trait, assigning the Groups to the user is uber easy:

By using the attachGroup method, if the User has no Groups assigned, the current_group_id column will automatically be set.

Get to know my group(s)

The currently assigned Group of a user can be accessed through the currentGroup relation like this:

The Group model has access to these methods:

• invites() — Returns a many-to-many relation to associated invitations.
• users() — Returns a many-to-many relation with all users associated to this group.
• owner() — Returns a one-to-one relation with the User model that owns this group.
• hasUser(User $user) — Helper function to determine if a user is a groupmember

Group owner

If you need to check if the User is a group owner (regardless of the current group) use the isGroupOwner() method on the User model.

Additionally if you need to check if the user is the owner of a specific group, use:

The isOwnerOfGroup method also allows an array or id as group parameter.

Switching the current group

If your Users are members of multiple groups you might want to give them access to a switch group mechanic in some way.

This means that the user has one "active" group, that is currently assigned to the user. All other groups still remain attached to the relation!

Glad we have the UserHasGroups trait.

Just like the isOwnerOfGroup method, switchGroup accepts a Group object, array, id or null as a parameter.

Inviting others

The best group is of no avail if you're the only group member.

To invite other users to your groups, use the Tecnico facade.

You can also send invites by providing an object with an email property like:

This method will create a GroupInvite model and return it in the callable third parameter.

This model has these attributes:

• email — The email that was invited.
• accept_token — Unique token used to accept the invite.
• deny_token — Unique token used to deny the invite.

In addition to these attributes, the model has these relations:

• user() — one-to-one relation using the email as a unique identifier on the User model.
• group() — one-to-one relation return the Group, that invite was aiming for.
• inviter() — one-to-one relation return the User, that created the invite.

Note: The inviteToGroup method will not check if the given email already has a pending invite. To check for pending invites use the hasPendingInvite method on the Tecnico facade.

Example usage:

Accepting invites

Once you invited other users to join your group, in order to accept the invitation use the Tecnico facade once again.

The acceptInvite method does two thing:

• Call attachGroup with the invite-group on the currently authenticated user.
• Delete the invitation afterwards.

Denying invites

Just like accepting invites:

The denyInvite method is only responsible for deleting the invitation from the database.

Attaching/Detaching/Invite Events

If you need to run additional processes after attaching/detaching a group from a user or inviting a user, you can Listen for these events:

In your EventServiceProvider add your listener(s):

The UserJoinedGroup and UserLeftGroup event exposes the User and Group's ID. In your listener, you can access them like so:

The UserInvitedToGroup event contains an invite object which could be accessed like this:

Limit Models to current Group

If your models are somehow limited to the current group you will find yourself writing this query over and over again: Model::where('group_id', auth()->user()->currentGroup->id)->get();.

To automate this process, you can let your models use the UsedByGroups trait. This trait will automatically append the current group id of the authenticated user to all queries and will also add it to a field called group_id when saving the models.

Note:

This assumes that the model has a field called group_id

Usage

When using this trait, all queries will append WHERE group_id=CURRENT_TEAM_ID. If theres a place in your app, where you really want to retrieve all models, no matter what group they belong to, you can use the allGroups scope.

Example:

License

Tecnico is free software distributed under the terms of the MIT license.

'Marvel Avengers' image licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 - Photo from W_Minshull