Laravel - Guest User Gates

The Guest User Gates feature is an add-on to the latest 5.7 version released in September 2018. This feature is used to initiate the authorization process for specific users.

In Laravel 5.6, there was a procedure where it used to return false for unauthenticated users. In Laravel 5.7, we can allow guests to go authorization checks by using the specific nullable type hint within the specified controller as given below −

<?php
Gate::define('view-post', function (?User $user) {
   // Guests
});

Explanation of the Code

By using a nullable type hint the $user variable will be null when a guest user is passed to the gate. You can then make decisions about authorizing the action. If you allow nullable types and return true, then the guest will have authorization. If you don’t use a nullable type hint, guests will automatically get the 403 response for Laravel 5.7, which is displayed below −

The difference between 403 and 404 error is that 404 is displayed when user tries to access the unknown resource or URL and 403 error as mentioned in the snapshot above is displayed if unauthorized user accesses the website.