Laravel Middleware access protected values

i wrote my own User-Role System, but i dont know how to implement the verification in my middleware routes.

The middleware class is calling on every request.

I recive the $request->user() but i can not access the attributes to verify if the user has the correct permissions.

My middleware controller looks like this:

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;
use Activation;
use Cartalyst\Sentinel\Laravel\Facades\Sentinel;

class AccountMiddleware
{
    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @param  \Closure  $next
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        $user = Sentinel::findByCredentials([
            'login' => $request->user()->attributes['email']
        );
        ...
        return $next($request);
    }
}

It doesnt work.

If I trie to dump the $request->user() i can see all properties but there are protected. What do i need to change, to make it work?

Solution

Accessing Eloquent model properties is done via accessors, in this case via the __get magic method. So you don't need to access them through the $attributes property array, all you need is this:

$request->user()->email;

The above will return the user email because the Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model::__get method already fetches the specified attribute automatically.

If you like, you can even define your own Accessors or Mutators to modify attribute values when reading or writing them to the database.