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.
Related
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.
The documentation doesn't talk much about logging in and out and handling security in general.In Symfony, you can secure pages of your site via a YML file. Does F3 have anything like that?
What is the recommended way to secure pages and handle a logged in user? I liked basic Auth, but it isn't very flexible, and it seems logging out is trickier. So I decided to set up a form for login/logout.
I would have assumed that Auth automatically creates a session, but from what I can tell it doesn't. So does that mean I need to manually do it?
Also, how do I block non authenticated visitors from the site? Do I need to add a SESSION check in each route?
The freedom when using F3 is that you can/must implement this on your own.
You got multiple options here or can create some other creative solutions too, if your project requires it. The included Auth plugin doesn't create a SESSION of course, because it cannot know if you want to use a SESSION to track your users or maybe use other solutions (cookie, JWT, etc).
So in most cases you need to create an Auth controller where you check if a user is logged in or not - here you would probably use the Auth plugin and create the SESSION if you want that. From there on you got serveral other options.. just to name a few:
use a base controller, that your other controllers will extend (or a Trait) and add a beforeroute there, where you'll check if the user is logged in and allowed to access that ressource.
check the user rights in the front controller (index.php) and don't even register the routes that the user has no access to.
use a 3rd party plugin to add access checks to routes, i.e. f3-access
use another middleware router to pre-flight the current request and add auth checks to multiple routes at once
I have build an e-commerce website with CakePHP Framework.
Now, i need to implement administration log-in, and orders/users management...
The big question is: Should i create a new App (a new CakePHP app folder), or use the existing one?
Using the same folder, would make me spend less time copying models, but, would considerably decrease 'security', because i would need to create methods for admin, and user...
Using separately framework, with almost the same models, would help me with the views... i would use another page template, and the log-in system would be different from the normal website.
So, what is the "best" solution for this case?
Thanks
Build the admin in the same app. It doesn't decrease security. You can easily control which controller methods are accessible by admin users with Prefix Routing. You can also change the view layout based on the route prefix. If you need something more fine-grained, Cake supports Access Control Lists for complex permissions systems.
In the end, your app will be much more maintainable if you are using a single set of models and controllers.
Here's a little code snippet I use in app_controller.php. This is from an app built in CakePHP 1.2, so it may need to be updated slightly for newer versions. This assumes that any registered user has access to the admin URLs, but that could easily be changed:
function beforeFilter(){
if (isset($this->params['prefix']) && $this->params['prefix'] == 'admin') {
if (!$this->Session->check('User')) {
// save the url in the session so that you can redirect there after login
$this->Session->write('lastPageVisited', $this->params['url']['url']);
$this->redirect('/users/login/');
exit();
}
// set the admin layout
$this->layout = 'admin';
}
}
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.
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).