The Bakery Everything CakePHP

I'm fairly new to CakePHP and I went for the stable release, and immediately wanted to do User Authentication. It's almost the first thing I build into any project. CakePHP 1.1 didn't have it, so I built my own.

This is mainly based on "obAuth" by Steve Oliveira. It was those ideas that formed the basis for this component. It includes a lot of the functionality that was designed into obAuth but never completed and also now ammended to work with CakePHP 1.2.

As soon as I switched to CakePHP 1.2 and wanted the same great features I built into the original and the same easy access control. So, I rewrote it and here's the result.

Firstly I'll show you how easy it is to work with.

Let's say you have a SecretsController which you want to restrict access to:

Controller Class:

Download code <?php 
class SecretsController extends AppController {
  var $name = 'Secrets';

  var $DarkAuth_requiresAuth = array('Secret Keepers','Super Cool People');

...

}
?>

Notice the one-liner? This will restrict access to the controller to Users who are memebrs of either the group 'Secret Keepers' or the group 'Super Cool People'.

Easy huh? However, I think Cake's own is that easy as well, so lets look at some more functionality.

How about you have a DocumentsController that only certain people can add to?

Controller Class:

Download code <?php 
class DocumentsController extends AppController {
  var $name = 'Documents';

  function add(){
    $this->DarkAuth->requiresAuth = array('Secret Makers');
    
    ...
  }

...

}
?>

Now that was easy, only memebers of the group 'Secret Makers' will have access.

How about your DocumentsController that has some Top Secret stuff in it and you want to restrict access? We could add to our "view" action some simple code:

Controller Class:

Download code <?php 
  function view($id){
    $this->Document->id = $id;
    $doc = $this->Document->read();

    if($doc['Document']['top_secret'] == true){
       $this->DarkAuth->requiresAuth('Top Brass');
    }
    ...

  }
?>

Note that the function "requiresAuth()" stops processing after you call it and will bring up an "access denied" view if authentication fails.

What if you wanted not to fail after but to redirect somewhere else?

Controller Class:

Download code <?php 
$this->DarkAuth->requiresAuth('Top Brass');
?>

Or more common if you wanted to show content based on whether authentication was present?

Controller Class:

Download code <?php 
  if($this->DarkAuth->isAllowed(array('Chocolate Lover'))){
    $data = $this->CookieJar->findAll(array('Chocolate'=>true));
  }else{
    $data = $this->CookieJar->findAll(array('Chocolate'=>false));
  }
?>

The "isAllowed()" function will return true/false but not halt processing.

The final selling point (in my opinion)! $DarkAuth_User available in the View, automatically populated with the user info from the user model. e.g.

View Template:

Download code
pr($DarkAuth_User);


Yields (if logged in, if not logged in the variable is null):

Download code
array(
  'id' => 1
  'username' => "superstar"
  'password' => "abcdef1234567890abcdef1234567890"
  'other_info' => "Some data"
)


Which means you can do this:

View Template:

Download code
if(!empty($DarkAuth_User)){ 
  echo "Some content for logged in people!";
}


Convinced? I hope so. Now on the Code and Setup