permission groups not working correctly - php

Question

ok, I have set up a basic membership system where I have groups in my db (members, admin and moderator).
the groups have 3 fields, id, name and permission. members I have left permission blank, admin has {"admin": 1
"moderator": 1} and moderator has {"moderator": 1}.
I have a simple function in a user.php file in a folder classes
function
class User {
public function hasPermission($key) {
$group = $this->_db->query("SELECT * FROM groups WHERE id = ?", array($this->data()->group));
if($group->count()) {
$permissions = json_decode($group->first()->permissions, true);
if($permissions[$key] === 1) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
}
then in a file admin.php I have a simple bit of code that should show a echo if the users logged in is admin
ps: I have required the init.php file that has my classes/User.php file required so that I do not need to call several files.
code
<?php
}
if($user->hasPermission('admin')) {
echo '<p>You are a admin!</p>';
} else {
echo 'You need to log in or register!';
}
?>
from this when a admin is logged in a echo should be displayed, unfortunately I am just getting a blank page.
Question
So my question is dose anyone know why this is not working as I have a admin permission set user logged in and am getting nothing on admin.php?
groups table
users table
Ok so for some reason the You need to log in or register! echo shows it dose not recognise when a admin is logged in.
all im trying to do is allow different groups different page accsess

Answer 1

Alright, since my previous answer was deleted.. here's another go.
Your problem is the type-safe comparison you do here:
if($permissions[$key] === true) {
return true;
}
Your array is filled from a json object {"moderator": 1}, which translates to array('moderator' => 1) in php. You are comparing a boolean true with an integer 1 using a type-safe comparison. That will fail because the types do not match. See http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.comparison.php for more detail.
You can remedy this by either using type-unsafe comparisons or by converting your $permissions to booleans.
if ((bool)$permissions[$key] === true) // Both are now of type boolean and will be compared.
or
if ($permissions[$key] == true) // Will compare 1 and TRUE, which will result in TRUE.