Better Route ownership guards

Authentication establishes identity; ownership authorization establishes whether that identity may access this object.

Raw route

use BetterRoute\Middleware\Auth\OwnershipGuardMiddleware;

$guard = new OwnershipGuardMiddleware(
    ownerResolver: static function ($context): ?int {
        return my_resource_owner_id((int) $context->request->get_param('id'));
    },
    bypassCapability: 'manage_options',
    deniedStatus: 404
);

$router->get('/records/(?P<id>\d+)', $handler)
    ->middleware([$auth, $guard])
    ->protectedByMiddleware('bearerAuth');

Run authentication before the guard. It resolves identity from the normalized auth.userId, then auth.subject, then the native WordPress current user. The owner resolver must load ownership server-side from the route resource; never trust a submitted owner ID.

Resource DSL

use BetterRoute\Resource\OwnedResourcePolicy;

Resource::make('records')
    ->policy(OwnedResourcePolicy::currentUserOwns(
        ownerResolver: static fn (int $id): ?int => my_resource_owner_id($id),
        ownedActions: ['get', 'update', 'delete'],
        bypassCapability: 'manage_options',
        allowListForAuthenticatedUsers: true
    ));

allowListForAuthenticatedUsers: true grants list permission to logged-in WordPress users; it does not filter the result. Apply an owner predicate in the repository/query, or disable the generated list permission, before exposing user-owned collections.

Rules

• Prefer denial as 404 when revealing object existence would leak data. Use 403 only for an intentionally discoverable object.
• Use narrowly scoped, reviewed bypass capabilities.
• Check ownership against the current stored record during writes, not a stale client copy.
• Cover get, update, and delete independently; list filtering is a separate control.
• Combine write authorization with optimistic locking and atomic idempotency when concurrency or duplicate side effects matter.

Test another user's ID, absent object, anonymous access, subject-only identity, native WordPress identity, admin bypass, and list-result isolation.

Source references: src/Middleware/Auth/OwnershipGuardMiddleware.php, src/Resource/OwnedResourcePolicy.php.

References

• Official documentation: https://lonsdale201.github.io/better-docs/docs/better-route/agents