creating temporary user accounts for a web application in php - php

I'm building a PHP application where users can design products and then check out to a shopping cart if they want to.
To let the user create a design, I need to assign a user ID and design ID to store it in the database.
There are two types of users who can build designs:
registed users. To take care of this, I have no problem.
non-registered users. These are guest visitors who might play around with product designs, and then when they hit check out, only then will I ask them to sign up. But in order to store their designs, I do need to have some kind of user ID.
I thought of using a timestamp as this user's ID, but what if two users in different parts of the world create designs at the same time? What's a good strategy for generating IDs for temporary/guest user accounts? I don't just mean temporary in the php session sense, because I want them to be able to access their partially saved designs later on if they visit the site again, just like any other registered user. I will only ask them to sign up before checking out for payment.

A simple approach might be:
Use a single user table (for registered users and guests)
Assign a "user_type" flag. E.g. registered/guest
Use the table primary key or other unique value for both "types" of user
When guests check out later on, switch their "user_type".
Store other related customer details in a separate table.

Related

Laravel - multiple accounts with multiple users and separated data

I have done a lot of reading on this but nothing stands out. I already have a authentication and authorisation system that can handle multiple guards and user roles (user, admin, super admin etc.)
I am trying to find out what is the best way to separate the system into totally separate accounts which have the following;
No login section
Landing page. Anyone can see without login.
Admin Section
Admin side of the system has a super-admins and then multiple admin-users.
These users can see all data from every user who has an account on the client side.
Client Section
Each user account has an owner who deals with billing, their own user admin etc.
Each client account also has a number of users (admin-users, editor-users etc.) with varying permissions.
Users on this side should only ever be able to see their own accounts data. They should not be able to ever see other accounts data.
Before Laravel, I would have an accounts table and assign a unique key to each account. Then a separate users table would contain the user along with their account key.
All database tables from this point onwards (posts, products, shipments etc.) would also have this key to ensure that the user account could only see their own data.
On top of this there would be permission tables, for granular control of what each user from either side can see.
Is my original way still suited to Laravel or is there a better way?
To separate out the accounts into their own "ecosystems" within the same code base is called multi tenancy. Basically, you scope your applications queries based on the user id and/or role which limits the available data to any given user.
Have a look at the Landlord Package.
In a very basic summary, what it does is add a where('tenant_id, auth()->id()) clause to every applicable query.
You can of course either omit the clause entirely for super admins to access all data, or apply even tighter constraints, say by adding a check for the user's role in addition to the clause, further limiting what a user can access within their respective account/organization/group etc.
Scoping can be done by any kind of relationship, you're not necessarily limited to the authenticated user's id. If your application has organizations for multiple user's you can use the organization id.
Multiple tenant ids is also possible, where a user must belong to an organization and a certain division within that organization.
Another package I've used previously is Hyn's multi-tenant.
We have same project as you mention . We create a company table and put it on the top of the hierarchy.
Then add new field all tables as company_id
And manage models over Policy -> https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/authorization
I hope this help

PHP: Database structure for user based networking

Some basics:
I am using a user authenticated login to an admin system that allows users to add customers, and an array of info about customers, including geo-location information for use with GMap API. My goal is to allow users to add each other for networking purposes in regards to their customer clientele. I am wondering what the best approach at building the database/table structure should be.
At the moment, I have a database called pbud1 with a users table and a customers table. For networking, my idea is to use the users unique id-> uid as an identifier for their network. Then add a table when a network is instantiated by the user, naming the table network_+the id from their 'users' table, ex: network_uid where pbud1.network_uid = pbud1.users.uid. So if the user has an id of 6 it would be network_6. Then within the new table "network_6", place relevant information on each row about each user that is added to that users network, ie; nid(key/ai) net_user_id(uid), geo_location, business, name, etc...
Goal: Allow each user within their parent network to access that specific user.parent customers information. Suggest users to user.parent due to geo_location of customer base between related users.
Honestly the semantics are not so important here as the structure and build of the DB table relationship in regards to the ability for networked users to access each others customers information.
Any assistance on approach would be greatly appreciated!

Where and how to make super user that can control everything?

I'm making a school management system using CodeIgniter framework of PHP.
I'm stuck in a situation where I want to make super user that the Principal of school will use and manage new students and teachers and other stuff related to school. He will obviously login first and then manage other details.
i. I want to know where should I place this super user. In database or hard coded it's username and password? (I know it is not good to make a table which would have just one row)
ii. And if I should "hard code" it then where should I write it's login detail so that it's secure.
You should keep the data in database keeping relation with multiple tables which wil help you later for givings roles to the users. Such as:
tbl_user -> Will contain users information
tbl_roles -> Contains the roles of the user
tbl_user_permission -> Would contain the user given permission to certain user.
Hence, the super user/ admin will have all the contained permissions whereas the super admin has also the facility to gib certain permission to other users as well.
Depending upon your SMS it will contain multiple users and different levels of users, so it is probably best to entry the data into database. Dividing into multiple tables.

Creating a table for users and customers to login or different tables for each one?

I'm trying to create a web application for a dental laboratory where admins and clients, all users, can log-in and access to some specific data accordingly to their rol. Admins can create, modify and delete data, clients can only check information about their debts and purchases. My question is: Should I store all users, that's admins and customers, in a single table? or should I isolate them by creating two tables for each specific rol and set a in the log-in form where they can pick to log-in as customers or admins? It affects the overall performance somehow? Thanks.
You should use single table for all the users.
And for distinguishing admin and client you can add one extra column in the table which specify whether user is admin or client.
Please use one table "users" for all user type with different group_id for differentiating admin and customer. Then make a group base permission in you code.

to provide access from one account to the data of another

I'm going to develop a multiuser system, where people can register an account, log in, store and manage the data of the account. For example, email address idetifiers a user.
Could you tell, please, how to provide the user of one account access to the data of another account. For example, by providing a link in the account that gives access to another account.
It looks like Google Analytics uses a mechanism similar to this one to give access of one user access to the account of another user.
Thanky you very much, Oleg.
Providing code will be impossible here but, I'm going to guess at your setup and we'll see what happens.
So, you perhaps have a users table and a data table.
One option, is to allow Private and Public options on the data table. Public can data can be accessed by anyone.
The other option is to have another table dataPermissions where you associate data ids to user ids. When listing data, if the data item isn't owned by the current user, they must have a corresponding entry in the dataPermissions table.
Remember though, providing code and examples of you database structure is the best way to get a good answer.
Update
Okay, so we know that users are identified by email and can have one or many links to data. Those links can be shared to other users. Therefore, you are going to have a table for users, identified by email, and a table for data which is identified by its link.
Therefore, a user can choose to add more users to a link. For this, you would need a new table that associated users and links, i.e. a userLinks table.

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