Panels

A panel is a self-contained area of the application with its own URL, look, navigation and access rules – e.g. /admin for the back office and /portal for employees or customers. Everything users see in Anvil lives in a panel: the resources with their lists and forms, own pages, the dashboard, the search, the notifications.

namespace App\Panels;

use Anvil\Access\Access;
use Anvil\Page\Dashboard;
use Anvil\Panel\Navigation\NavigationGroup;
use Anvil\Panel\Panel;

final class AdminPanel extends Panel
{
    public function id(): string { return 'admin'; }

    public function brand(): string { return 'ACME Back Office'; }

    public function primaryColor(): ?string { return '#0d9488'; }

    public function permission(): ?string { return 'admin.access'; }

    public function resources(): array
    {
        return [InvoiceResource::class, CustomerResource::class, ...Access::resources()];
    }

    public function pages(): array
    {
        return [Dashboard::class, ReportsPage::class, ...Access::pages()];
    }

    public function navigationGroups(): array
    {
        return ['Sales', NavigationGroup::make('Reports')->icon('bar-chart')->collapsible()];
    }
}

Creating and registering a panel

php spark make:anvil-panel Admin --suffix

generates App\Panels\AdminPanel (options: --namespace, --force). Register the panel in app/Config/Anvil.php:

namespace Config;

use Anvil\Config\Anvil as BaseAnvil;

class Anvil extends BaseAnvil
{
    public array $panels = [\App\Panels\AdminPanel::class];
}

Panels are registered explicitly; Anvil never scans the file system. The ids must be unique (LogicException otherwise). From the registered panels Anvil derives the routes, the navigation, the permissions in the role editor and the components of the endpoint.

What a panel defines

Topic	Methods	Details
Identity and look	id(), path(), brand(), logo(), primaryColor(), maxContentWidth(), stylesheets(), scripts()	Configuration
Content	resources(), pages()	Resources and pages
Start page	widgets()	Dashboard
Navigation	navigationGroups(), userMenuItems()	Navigation
Access	permission(), authMethods(), requiresMfa(), filters(), logoutUrl()	Access and login
Tenants	hasTenancy()	Tenants
URLs	url(), endpointUrl()	Routes and URLs

Methods not overridden keep their defaults; most panels only need id(), brand(), resources() and pages().

A request in a panel

1. The route belongs to the panel (/admin/...); its filters run first: session, login method, forced password change, handover lock, tenant and panel permission (Access and login).
2. The panel becomes the current panel: service('panels')->current().
3. The page or resource checks its own permission and policies.
4. The content is rendered into the layout of the panel with sidebar and topbar.
5. Interactive parts (lists, forms, actions, search) talk to the component endpoint of the panel with signed tokens.

Several panels

An application can have several panels, e.g. a back office and a self service portal with different resources, colours and access rules. See Several panels.