I am creating an web application and I at the point that i am starting to make backend choices. Now there are a lot of ways to go with this, so I am looking for some good points and back practices.
Some of the question i have involve:
Should i make a seperate table in the db for admin users
Should i extend make some classes to load the admin data and the normal data, or make seperate classes for the admin section
Where can i get some information on making different types of users
Just some best practices for a backend
My application is written in PHP with an MySQL database.
Keeping a separate table for admin users is nice, but only if those admin users aren't "regular" users as well - otherwise you'll step on your own toes trying to keep usernames/IDs unique but somewhat connected.
A couple things to consider:
Apache authentication (or Windows accounts on IIS) for admin users. Separate system entirely, but allows for overlap - a regular user can be a regular user, but they can't access any admin functionality until they authenticate through the browser. Works fine if you only have a couple specific kinds of user role (e.g. member & administrator only).
All users in one table, but with roles and permissions separate. This is the most flexible because you can get as granular as you need. For example, any user can "post comments," while an admin can "delete comments" and "ban users," but a moderator can only "suspend comments" and "mute users." As you add new features, it's simply a matter of implementing some new permissions & assigning them to the roles. Drupal's access control does this really well, worth a close look.
A good way to do it is to add a new field in the users table for 'rank' in order to differentiate between regular users and staff members, and possibly between the different staff member levels such as moderator, admin, etc. if you need it. Because an administrator should be able to perform all functions that a user can. Use
class Admin extends User { }
if you want to add additional functionality specific to staff members.
As for backend functions, that depends on how your site is set up. If you're using a framework, you can just add new functions to existing controllers and restrict access only to users with a certain rank.
For example, you might have a controller for ForumPost objects, but calling the ForumPost delete() function would require the user to be a forum moderator.
If you're not using a framework, you'll probably have to make your own pages for each backend function you need.
Related
I am quite new to Laravel, but get most of the basics by now.
Currently, I build an application, where multiple companies each get an account that represents their main user, let's call him CompanyAdmin.
This user is allowed to create new users for this company and able to view all quotes from the company.
The newly created users, call them CompanyEmployee, can not create new users and only view the quotes they created themselves, as well as creating new quotes.
Now there is of course one SuperAdmin, which sits on the other side of the table. He views all quotes from all companies, is able to do create users as he pleases and can accept/edit quotes.
My current approach to do this would be to attach a user_id to all quotes and attach the users to a company, as well as giving them a role.
All the logic would take place in the controller, where I would check the role of the user and therefore read/save only the quotes, the user is able to edit.
However, it feels very dirty to do so and sounds like a lot of effort to maintain. If you would e.g. make another role for an employee of the SuperAdmin, you would need to change every controller.
I could not find a way to define the access rights per role per model, so when I call Quotes::all() it only retrieves the legal ones (same goes for saving of course).
Please guide me to a Laravel feature (or even package, but I have not used one before) that helps me get things done.
Looking forward to possible solutions that lead to low maintainance.
Best regards!
For authenticating different types of users and protecting group of routes that particular type can access you can use guards, for authorizing CRUD actions you can use FormRequest, I think you have everything you need under these 2 links, ofcourse you will need to read up on these, this is a good starting point. As for tables, you can have these:
users, roles, companies, user_role, user_company
And models:
User, Role, Company
from the doc
In addition to providing authentication services out of the box,
Laravel also provides a simple way to authorize user actions against a
given resource. Like authentication, Laravel's approach to
authorization is simple, and there are two primary ways of authorizing
actions: gates and policies.
Laravel has 2 concepts called Gates and Policies which we can inject it on models,(specially Gates), So when ever the queries are called upon the Model, the Gates make sure that the user has appropriate permissions.
You can read more here
I am planning to build a site which will have members and member uploaded content. I need to choose between the following:
a) A separate interface for admins and users
b) Same interface for admins and users
For example, a particular module 'yellowpages', would have listings uploaded by members. When the owner of the listing visits the page, they will be displayed edit/delete links by checking their session data against the database. The same will be displayed to an administrator. These links will not be visible to public users. The edit/delete functions will also check if the user is the owner/or is an admin so as to avoid the public from accessing the edit/delete URLs direclty.
Also, if the user is an admin, an additional navigation bar will be displayed on the top which has links to functions that will add/edit/modify site settings and everything.
So my question is, is the above a good way to do it? or to have separate interfaces for users and admins like http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2009/07/Create-an-Admin-panel-with-CodeIgniter
There is another options too. And I Prefer this.
C) Mix Both (a) and (b) Options of Yours
Create a separate interface for admins.
which includes admin listing and managing of users and listings (edit/delete/ban user etc..)
Plus You can use users and permissions type of situation.
For Ex.
Add a table permissions user type can be admin, guest, registered,
moderator etc..
Depend on login type : session will be stored and as
per session in front end the operations will be displayed.
Ex.:
guest will not see "add comment" link ;
registered can add comment +
listings + edit own listing ;
moderator can edit anyone's listing ;
admin has all rights.
Depend on your application and time you can add as much as you want.
I wrote as per globalization of any application.
If you gona use same interface it whould be less secure. Intruder would be theoretically able to become admin throug user interface. Also while programming you will have to keep in mind that some methods would be used by user and admin both - so ypu can simply forget something letting intruder some way to go. I'd beter create one class with methods used by admin and user (i.e. edit(), delete()) and extend it with two classes - user and admin.
I'm trying to build an authentication system in my application, but I'm having some problems in deciding which is the best way I could acomplish what I want in CodeIgniter.
The website allows companies to manage their buildings. A company can have many buildings, and many users (when I say users I mean employees from that company).
In this website I would like two have (basically) four general kind of users.
Super Admin: This would be able to add new admins and new companies to the database, and give privileges to the rest of the admins.
Admin: This would be able to do different stuff depending on the assigned privileges.
Company Super User: This user would be created directly when an admin creates a new company. This user would be able to create new users for that company, and since s/he would have total permissions, he would be able to do everything that the other users can do.
Company User: Depending on the privileges assigned by its super user, this user would be able to do and see different data (for example, a simple user would just be able to see information from one of the many company buildings).
So, even though I've seen many authentication libraries out there for CodeIgniter, it would be nice to hear any recommendations about how I could design this "authentication role based" system, and if you particularly recommend a library that could help to accomplish this.
Appreciate!
There Are many libraries that already handle Authentication within Codeigniter, but the one I would recommend is Ion_Auth. It handles user permissions (groups) very well and I've actually done a detailed writeup outlining a good way to handle this situation with Ion_Auth.
I suggest FlexiAuth library which is a re-modified version of ion Auth, and has lot of features already built in, simply out of the box.
I've been developing a role based authentication system for Codeigniter called WolfAuth, here's the repository. It's still early days, but it sort of works. You can add roles, etc and then restrict functions and classes to particular user roles and usernames.
Use CI_aauth. I like this, this is very good from others auth.
https://github.com/kabircse/CodeIgniter-Aauth
My RealEstate PHP Application have following user groups,
Admins,
Moderators
Agents
i want to specify following permission to the following users.
Admins - >
Can Create Moderators,
Can Create Agents,
Can Insert Properties,
Can Update Properties,
Can Delete Properties
Hence an Admin will have all the privileges in short an Admin here will be superAdmin
I want to assign limited privileges to the moderator and hence to the agents.
i am confused on how to Create a Database for this and also on how to implement it in my PHP Application.
thank you
It sounds like you are going to need a role-based access control system. Developing one is not
really a trivial task, so as already suggested, finding a framework or ready-made class that does
the job would be a worth while start.
Role Based Access Control
http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/role-based-access-control.html
http://www.sqlrecipes.com/database_design/fine_grained_role_based_access_control_rbac_system-3/
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=162027
You should create a table wher you have to define all type of role.
and one table for users
relate different roles to different user Via linking two tables.
and some thing like this ......
The way that I have done this in the past was to create a users table in the database that had an access level (Admin, Moderator, and agents).
Then if you have a menu system, implement a check to see what privileges are needed for what links... Admins will see all links, Moderator will only see links he/she is supposed to, and agents will only see what they are supposed to see.
Also on the pages that you may want to restrict users you will want to check for the users access level. If they pass, they will see the page, if not, they will be redirected or a javascript error will need to pop up.
Something like the access level may do you some good to store it in a cookie as you can cut down your calls to your database.
Hope this helps,
Mike
How can i manage user permission?
i need a fast method to manage users (accsess to a page or dont accsee to a page) when they login?
You may want a simple solution but it's not a simple question.
At one end you could have individual permissions for each page for each user. That gives you a lot of flexibility but it would be an administrative nightmare. At the other end you could give users access or not to the whole site. Not very flexible but very easy to administer and code for.
The first is fine-grained. The second is coarse-grained. The whole point of finding an authorization scheme is to define one that is as fine or coarse grained as you need to balance flexibility and administration/development.
Two common schemes that may be of interest to you:
Give each user a type in the database. When they log in put that type (eg User, Admin, Moderator) in the session and check that on each relevant page;
Give each user one or more roles (so someone could, say, be both an Admin and a Moderator or just one of them or neither). This requires a separate table (users and userroles) and putting probably an array in the session to indicate roles but is more flexible than (1). Role-based authorization is very common.
There are many, many variations upon these two and just as many alternatives. Various schemes can be combined.
This is why generic authorization libraries for me fall short because they have contrary needs of being broad enough to cover a large number of use cases and being coarse-grained enough to be useful for the individual user.
Implement an ACL system.
A group of users form a role
A user may belong to many roles
Privileges are defined in the application - example, create user, post article. etc
Add privileges to roles via admin interface
Before the page loads, check ACL. If user belongs to a role with the required privileges for the requested page, allow user to continue. Else redirect to access denied page.
It can be easily achieved using third party libraries like Zend_Acl
Choose a library you are comfortable working with. But the basic idea remains same.