I have a project which includes admin and user section. Both section use the same controllers, just different functions and templates (ex: viewAdmin() and viewUser()). In function beforeRender() of every controllers, I set variable $admin as true for admin functions and false for user functions.
For authentication, I use Shibboleth. Shibboleth uses data from LDAP, while user types were saved in SQL-Database, that means while it can check if the login and password are false, it can't check if the user is admin or not. An user can go to ADMIN section as long as they use the right action (ex: go to the link http://example.com/tool/viewAdmin).
To prevent this, I will have to:
Load model Users
Compare the environment variable uid (login name) with the "login" columns in Users table in my SQL-Database
See the "type" column in Users table to know if user is admin or not.
Compare the result with value of $admin and redirect to an error page when necessary.
The problem is: I don't want to repeat those steps for EVERY controllers.
Currently I have 2 ideas:
Write a function in UsersController, and use it in every controllers.
Create a component and load it in every controllers.
Both methods require me changing code in all controllers. I would like to hear a better way with less work, perhaps by changing app.php or bootstrap.php.
Any suggestion is appreciated.
To share methods in CakePHP controllers you can do:
Create component and include in controller
Or create method in AppController and use it in child controllers
Or PHP way create Trait.
But when you authorize users, then all user data is stored in session, incl. is user roles (example admin, regular, member,.. )
Use the official CakePHP authentication plugin and extend the LDAP adapter with the additional code check you need. This is very easy to do and also a very clean way of solving the problem. Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors of the authentication plugin. https://github.com/cakephp/authentication
Or if you want to stay agnostic to any framework, use my library that is based on the authentication plugin and was decoupled from any framework but still works just nice with Cake https://github.com/Phauthentic/authentication.
Related
I am using this version of codeigniter 2.1.4 and I want to add user roles and permission. I am totally new for this framework I have done this in Zend but I am not able to find any library in codeigniter. I am also confused with Hooks.
Anybody will explain me what the purpose of hooks in a layman language. and also about the library with a small example with the same version so that it will be easy to understand.
Thanks.
Since you already have experience with the Zend ACL, why not use it in your CodeIgniter project? (Link)
Just set up your roles, resources, and permissions in your "MY_Controller.php" file so they're available to all your controllers. Also set up your user in MY_Controller (e.g. $this->theUser) for the same reason.
Set up classes for your resources in your Libraries folder that "implements Zend_Acl_Resource_Interface" and a "User" class for your user that "implements Zend_Acl_Role_Interface".
After setting up the ACL in MY_Controller, retrieve role(s) for the user from your database and add them to your user:
$roles = $this->theUser->getRoles(); // get the assigned role(s) for the user (array)
$acl->addRole($this->theUser, $roles); // then apply them to the user
With that done, I typically put something like the following at the top of each controller:
if ( !$this->acl->isAllowed($this->theUser, 'article', 'modify') ) {
redirect( '/home', 'refresh' ); // go back home
exit;
}
Don't forget, you can even set up dynamic assertions (i.e. implements Zend_Acl_Assert_Interface) if a permission to a resource requires some logic. I typically put assertion classes immediately following their related resource class.
Use Ion_Auth, it is an authentication library with a system of user roles. Should be easier for you to create permissions in your code.
This is only my 2-cents but Hooks are somehow similar to an event-driven approach. This means that they will be triggered at particular times in your code.
In the documentation, you can see that CI has 7 hooks ready. Thus, you can inject any script of yours at those 7 moments.
Let's say that you can add a script during the hook pre_controller that checks for the user's browser's language, so that in all your controllers you already know the language to use.
Note that ion_auth also supports hooks.
I am creating a login & registration system using CodeIgniter.
Currently I have a Model, View and Controller for login, with functions to validate,
check username, etc and an registration model, view and controller,
that does the registration.
I have chosen to separate the login and registration as a principle.
So right now i need to include functions to edit profile, and to check if logged in or not, and to check the user's role, and I would like to know how can i best do this, i have planned creating a user model and controller(no view), the main user controller would have the methods call to model's, but however the methods(updateprofile,islogin,etc) would be in different models, for example in the login model.
So is this design good/bad? How can it be done better. I would appreciate your suggestion's.
I really find no problem with your application structure. Its how you write your code and how will it easily be to update it in the future. For managing your models try using an ORM. PHPActiveRecord is a good start. With this, you no longer be creating alot of individual functions for your database transactions. Reference
You can create a User_Model and expand it as needed. You can see this CI auth lib for example as how build login & registration structure in CodeIgniter.
Using CakePHP 2.0's ACL I have created 2 groups. One is admin and one is visitors. Right now admin can add and upload images and visitors can just view the images, if they click add or delete, it won't let them do anything. What's the best way to remove these links for visitor group? If I check which group they belong to using if/else statement, would that be the best solution?
To hide links that lead to actions a user is not authorized to perform, the views must somehow be aware of the user permissions.
You could check these permissions by checking the group a user belongs to, but this would mean that you wouldn't rely on the ACL permissions anymore. So any ACL permission update would have to be reported in code. Not very handy.
Then what else ? An approach is to check the user permissions in the controller, typically during login, and then keep these permissions in session.
The permissions in session can then be checked in the views to hide or show some parts of the views. You can find an example of this method here:
But for links specifically, you can go a little further and avoid to write the tests in views. I personnaly use a helper that inherits from the HtmlHelper and overrides the link() method.
Basically it works on the same idea: inside the overriden link() method, the permission on the target action is checked and the helper return the link, or nothing if the user is not allowed to access the target action.
If you want to try my code, you can use my Acl plugin
In your AppController, set the permissions:
var $components = array(..., 'Acl.AclManager');
function beforeFilter()
{
...
//you can put it here as the permissions check is performed only once per session
$this->AclManager->set_session_permissions();
...
}
And in your views, use the AclHtmlHelper
$this->AclHtml->link(...);
A general remark on the principle this method is based on though: all permissions are checked during login. If you have many actions in your application, this can considerably slow down the login.
A more effective approach could be to check the user permission for each actions only when it is required, meaning when the link() method is called. But this would mean that the helper would have to check the Acl permission itself, and this would somehow break the MVC model. And in the core lib, the Acl check is highly coupled to a component.
Building my first web app using Yii and wondering if it is best to include the user registration process as part of my UserController or is it better to create a registrationController and keep the logic separated?
And ...on the same line of thought, would it be beneficial to have a profileController to handle additional user information, or just have the userController handle that as well?
Is a registration the creation of a User?
Similarly is a profile just a view or update of a User?
It seems like these could all fit one controller fairly well as basic CRUD operations.
In my opinion you can make it to the UserController because the notion of registration is to create a new user. So I think you can make Register same with Create.
Actually, they are not very complex and could be in one controller. It is at least my own habit to include CRUD in one controller(Maybe my apps do not involve complex logic)
Does this form require the user to enter data that is not permanently stored in the dataabse? If so then you should create a new model derived from CFormModel rather than ActiveRecord. Your site controller can handle the launching of the CFormModel views which then take care of themselves (validation, ajax, whatever) if they don't need any dynamic interaction with server (LoginForm) or they can have a separate controller if more complex interaction is needed (RegisterForm). In a CFormModel you can access the user input during the session and process/store it however you like, but then it disappears when the user is done. See the LoginForm and RegisterForm for the blog demo, as example patterns.
Does this form have as much dynamic data interaction with other models as it does with User (not just one-off cascading of relationships)? In that case it might be best to create that separate RegisterController you mention. That's what the blog demo does, and it's a pretty simple app.
You can use gii to automatically create the CRUD interface for admin's and community moderators/managers from your User model. You can then customize it and renderPartial it whenever you want to reuse one of those views for a non-admin user. The validation rules in the models carry over too. Only guests and normally-privileged users need the dumbed down interface of a LoginForm and RegisterForm.
Good idea is to put user related stuff in module, so you could use it easy in different app. In that module you could put profile, or other user related controllers without clutttering app.
I am trying to create a login system thats generic so that it can be adapted for use in various apps. I decided that 2 main "parts" of the system will be User Meta Data & Roles/Resources/ACL.
1. Metadata
I thought of keeping most data like what meta data are available for users in the database, so that admins can manage them using some GUI.
Problem is how can I then configue how I want inputs to render (textbox, checkbox, radios etc.). Then another problem is validation, filters.
2. ACL
I think for simple ACL it will work fine. But suppose I want say users to be able to modify posts they own. In Zend_ACL that is accomplished with Assertions. I thought that will make a "simple" login system overlly complex? Also it will be hard to build I suppose?
Currently I have my database like
Logging in users: I recommend using a separate controller (call it Auth for instance) that has loginAction and logoutAction. Zend_Auth (Zend_Auth using database) will check the database for the right credentials. Once the user is verified, you will save it in the global accessible place(the Zend_Auth class has methods to do this). This is also a good moment to query which roles the user has and store them.
Metadata part of your application: I'm not sure what the question is exactly but I assume you want to store dynamic information about user and have a GUI for admins to manage this. Why you would render different types of controls? Validating the information can be done by defining a lot of the most common metadata (like Twitter) and create rules for them. In the save action for the metadata you would validate using these rules.
ACL: Resources rarely change, you are better off putting them in a configuration file (for speed). You should give a lot thought to resources: what are they exactly to you? Controllers? Modules? Create a plugin that will preDispatch every request checking the role of the logged in user against the requested resource. E.g.:
$action = $request->getActionName();
$controller = $request->getControllerName();
// role, resource, privilage
if (!$acl->isAllowed($user->role, $controller, $action) {
//go to access denied page!
}
Now that Zend_ACL is used for the global access rules, you are better off checking for specific access inside the action itself (like if ($loggedInUser == $article->author) {//edit the article};).
Also don't forget Zend_ACL can be integrated with Zend_Navigation to hide menu items users are not allowed to use (and more).