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Roles Laravel Package
geniusts/roles
A Laravel package for managing roles and permissions with a simple API. Assign roles to users, define permissions, and control access across your application using lightweight, flexible tools that integrate cleanly with Laravel's authorization system.
Powerful package for handling roles and permissions in Laravel 6, 7
Frequently asked questions about Roles
- Does geniusts/roles work with Laravel 8, 9, 10, or 11?
- geniusts/roles targets Laravel 6 and 7 only. Both versions are end-of-life (Laravel 7 in March 2021 and Laravel 6 security support in September 2022), and the Composer solver will likely refuse installation against Laravel 8 or newer illuminate/* constraints. It is a fit for legacy applications already pinned to 6 or 7, or for teams prepared to fork and relax the constraints themselves.
- How do I install geniusts/roles in a Laravel project?
- Install it with Composer, then publish the package assets so the migrations and config land in your application, and run the migrations. You also add the package trait to your User model so roles and permissions can be assigned. Always review the published migrations before running them in an existing database to check for table name collisions.
- Does geniusts/roles integrate with Laravel Gate and policies, or replace them?
- The package surfaces authorization checks through middleware, Gate/Policy hooks, and Blade directives, so it is intended to work alongside Laravel's native authorization rather than sit entirely outside it. Before adopting, inspect the source to confirm whether it registers a Gate before hook or replaces Gate outright. That distinction determines whether removing the package later is a small change or a broad refactor.
- Is geniusts/roles safe to use for production authorization?
- Treat it with caution for new production systems. The package has very low adoption (around 63 stars), no documented security disclosure process, and authorization bugs are asymmetric: over-granting is a breach and under-granting is an outage, and neither tends to show up in routine QA. Pairing it with an end-of-life Laravel version compounds audit findings, so legacy use is the realistic case.
- Does geniusts/roles support multiple roles per user or role inheritance?
- The overview describes assigning roles to users and defining permissions, but it does not document whether a user can hold multiple roles simultaneously or whether roles can inherit from other roles. Check the published migrations and the authorization predicates in the source to confirm. If hierarchy exists, verify that inheritance cycles are guarded.
- Does geniusts/roles support multi-tenancy or team-based roles?
- First-class multi-tenancy or team scoping is not documented, and the evaluation flags it as an open question. In most cases tenant scoping is left to the application, which means you add tenant-aware constraints around role and permission lookups yourself. Confirm this before designing a multi-tenant authorization model around the package.
- What are the Composer version constraints for geniusts/roles?
- The exact constraints live in the package's composer.json under php and illuminate/*, and they are the reason Laravel 8+ installs usually fail. If you need the package on a newer Laravel, plan a fork that relaxes those constraints and re-runs the test suite. That converts a dependency decision into ongoing maintenance ownership.
- How should I test role and permission checks when using geniusts/roles?
- Wrap the package behind an application-owned interface (for example an AuthorizationService with assignRole,revokeRole, hasPermission, and can) and test that interface rather than the vendor facade. Use Laravel's testing helpers to assert both allowed and denied paths, including role revocation and permission edge cases. Published package tests may be thin, so your own coverage on the authorization predicates matters.
- What are the best alternatives to geniusts/roles for Laravel?
- For greenfield Laravel 8+ projects, use spatie/laravel-permission, which is actively maintained, widely adopted, and integrates natively with Gate. For simpler products, a hand-rolled RBAC layer is often 200 to 400 lines and removes the dependency entirely. geniusts/roles mainly makes sense when you are already on Laravel 6 or 7 and need something quickly.
- How do I migrate off geniusts/roles later without a big refactor?
- Insulate the vendor behind an application-owned authorization interface so every controller, policy, and Blade template calls your interface rather than the package facade or trait. That costs roughly a day of scaffolding and turns a future package swap into a single adapter rewrite instead of a multi-sprint refactor. It also gives you a clean seam if the package is abandoned.
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