How to allow uploading files to Laravel Vapor without User

The Laravel Vapor docs tell you to create a UserPolicy to authorize file uploads to S3 using the laravel-vapor npm package. But what if you want logged-out users to be able to upload files too?

The Vapor package checks against the uploadFile method in UserPolicy, but you can override that by creating an authorization gate called uploadFile.

To do so, add this gate to AuthServiceProvider.php:

// AuthServiceProvider.php

public function boot()
{
	$this->registerPolicies();

	Gate::define('uploadFiles', function ($user = null) {
		return true;
	});
}

The argument $user defaulting to null indicates that this gate can be run even when there is no logged-in user. And since it always returns true, anyone can upload files, even without being logged in to your Laravel app.