Leveraging Laravel Nova's ActionEvents as an Audit Trail for Admin Users

Laravel Nova is a powerful administration panel specifically designed for Laravel applications. Among its many features, one standout functionality is the ActionEvents table, which serves as an excellent tool for creating an audit trail to track user actions. In this article, we'll delve into how you can effectively leverage this feature, while also ensuring that only admin users have access to it. Please note that the examples provided in this guide are based on Laravel Nova version 4.25.1 and Laravel version 10.13.5.

Enabling Access to the ActionEvents Table

By default, Laravel Nova includes the ActionEvents table, which can be accessed at /resources/action-events.

To make this feature exclusive to admin users, follow these steps:

• Add the following code to the NovaServiceProvider.php's boot() function in order to append the ActionEvents link to the user menu:

Nova::userMenu(function (Request $request, Menu $menu) {
    $menu
        ->append(
            MenuItem::make('Actions', "/resources/action-events")->canSee(function (Request $request) {
                return $request->user()->isAdmin();
            })
        );

    return $menu;
});

Controlling Manual Access to the ActionEvents

While restricting access through the user menu ensures that only admin users can see the ActionEvents link, it's crucial to prevent non-admin users from manually navigating to /resources/action-events. Here's how you can achieve this:

• Generate the ActionEventPolicy by running the following command:

php artisan make:policy ActionEventPolicy

• Implement the necessary logic in the policy to restrict access. For instance, you can use the viewAny method:

<?php

namespace App\Policies;

use Laravel\Nova\Actions\ActionEvent;
use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Auth\Access\HandlesAuthorization;

class ActionEventPolicy
{
    use HandlesAuthorization;

    /**
     * Determine whether the user can view any models.
     */
    public function viewAny(User $user): bool
    {
        return $user->isAdmin();
    }

    /**
     * Determine whether the user can view the model.
     */
    public function view(User $user, ActionEvent $actionEvent): bool
    {
        return $user->isAdmin();
    }
}

• Register the policy in app/Providers/AuthServiceProvider.php:

protected $policies = [
    'Laravel\Nova\Actions\ActionEvent' => 'App\Policies\ActionEventPolicy',
];

• By following these steps, you will have a robust audit trail that is accessible only to admin users. It provides basic information such as the user who made the edit and the changes that were made.

Conclusion:

By leveraging Laravel Nova's built-in ActionEvents table, developers can easily implement a comprehensive audit trail within their admin panel. By adding the ActionEvents link to the user menu and controlling access through a policy, you ensure that only admin users can view and utilize the audit trail. This approach is particularly beneficial for new projects that rely on Laravel Nova as the primary administration tool, enabling developers to maintain an organized and efficient audit trail of user actions.

Note: If you're interested in exploring further, you can dive into the vendor/laravel/nova/src/Actions/ActionResource.php file to see how Laravel Nova handles the resource for actions.