---
title: Extending
weight: 3
---

## Extending User Models
Laravel's authorization features are available in models which implement the `Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\Access\Authorizable` trait. By default Laravel does this in `\App\User` by extending `Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User`, in which the trait and contracts are declared.

If you are creating your own, or additional, User models and wish Authorization features to be available on it, including the Roles and Permissions features of this package, you need to implement `Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\Access\Authorizable` in one of those ways as well.


## Extending Role and Permission Models
If you are extending or replacing the role/permission models, you will need to specify your new models in the configuration. 
First be sure that you've published the configuration file (see the Installation instructions), and edit it to update the `models.role` and `models.permission` values to point to your new models.

Note the following requirements when extending/replacing the models: 


### Extending
If you need to EXTEND the existing `Role` or `Permission` models note that:

- Your `Role` model needs to extend the `Spatie\Permission\Models\Role` model
- Your `Permission` model needs to extend the `Spatie\Permission\Models\Permission` model

### Replacing
If you need to REPLACE the existing `Role` or `Permission` models you need to keep the
following things in mind:

- Your `Role` model needs to implement the `Spatie\Permission\Contracts\Role` contract
- Your `Permission` model needs to implement the `Spatie\Permission\Contracts\Permission` contract