TinyAuth ACL - fast and easy | The Bakery, Everything CakePHP

TinyAuth ACL - fast and easy

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For most simple applications with some user frontend and maybe some admin backend the core ACL is way too much overhead in most cases. You would want something simple. Another advantage: It works with multiple roles per user - out of the box.

If it doesn't even have to be databased you can use a simple ini file to manage all ACL stuff for you. I called it TinyAuth.

Basic Setup

The ini file acl.ini will be in /Config/ and is as easy as it gets:

[Tools.Countries]
* = superadmin ; this is a comment
 
[Account]
edit,change_pw = *
 
[Activities]
admin_index,admin_edit,admin_add,admin_delete = admin,superadmin
index = *
 
[Users]
index,search = user
* = moderator,admin

Most of it is probably self-explanatory.

You don't even have to provide a roles table. If you don't manage your roles in the database you can just use Configure to store the roles:

$config['Role'] = array(
    'superadmin' => 1,
    'admin' => 2,
    'moderator' => 3,
    'helper' => 4,
    'user' => 5,
);

This simulates the roles table until you actually want or need it.

Now all you need to do is to include TinyAuth in your beforeFilter() method of the AppController:

$this->Auth->authorize = array('Tools.Tiny');

Although you don't need the Plugin structure. If you don't want to use it you can just drop it into your app /Auth folder.

Tips

The Authentication module comes with some handy "shortcuts". You can allow all frontend actions to logged in users by default and only managing admin (backend) actions.

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