Variables which are mostly used.

• string $authError = null It is of string type and mainly used to provide error messages when a user attempts to access an area to which he doesn’t have the permission to access. You can set this in beforeFilter() or as arguments to Auth component. Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
        $this->Auth->authError="You don't have access to that area. Please login first.";
}

• boolean $autoRedirect = true It determines whether AuthComponent will automatically redirect and exit if login is successful. The importance of this variable is that if you have custom code (cookies, last login) in your login() action which you want to execute then you need to set it to false, so Auth doesn’t auto redirect. If it is set to true then whatever code you have in your login() is not executed. Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
      $this->Auth->autoRedirect=false;
}

function login()
{
if($this->Auth->user()!=null)
       {
             $this->User->id=$this->Auth->user('id');
             $current = date("F j, Y, g:i a");
             $this->User->saveField('last_login',$current);
             $this->redirect(array('controller'=>'users','action'=>'profile'));
        }
}

• array $data = array() This variable holds form data of controller. Example :

function login()
{
if($this->Auth->data['User']['username']!=null)
         {
               //your code;
           }
}

• array $fields = array(‘username’ => ‘username’, ‘password’ => ‘password’) It allows us to tell Auth that against which fields of our Model it needs to validate users. By default it is username and password. But suppose if someone have fields in database table as email and secret_word and he wants to use these fields for authentication, then we need this variable. Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
 $this->Auth->fields=array('username'=>'email','password'=>'secret_word');
}

• mixed $loginAction = null This variable holds login action URL, by default it is login(). But if we have some other function which is handling our login process then we need to provide path in this variable. We can set url with the help of string or using array(); Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
//using string
 $this->Auth->loginAction="/users/authenticate";
//or using array notation
 $this->Auth->loginAction=array('controller'=>'users','action'=>'authenticate');
}

• string $loginError = null Error to display when user login fails. For security purposes, only one error is used for all login failures, so as not to expose information on why the login failed. But we can also customize it in our login system. In views to output it we need to use session helper; i.e <?phpecho$this->Session->flash(‘Auth’);?> Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
  $this->Auth->loginError="Username or password entered is incorrect. Please try again.";
}

• mixed $loginRedirect = null Normally, if a user is redirected to the $loginAction page, the location they were redirected from will be stored in the session so that they can be redirected back after a successful login. If this session value is not set, the user will be redirected to the page specified in $loginRedirect. Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
  $this->Auth->loginRedirect=array('controller'=>'users','action'=>'profile');;
}

• mixed $logoutRedirect = null This holds URL of default action to be invoked as soon as user is logged out of the web application. This URL will be returned from logout() of AuthComponent. Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
  $this->Auth->logoutRedirect=array('controller'=>'pages','action'=>'home');
}

• string $userModel = ‘User’ Suppose you have saved your users in a database table named as Clients or People, then we need to specify this to Auth component so that it can validate accordingly, if we don’t give this info it will look for users table, so that is wrong. Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
  $this->Auth->userModel="clients";
}

• array $userScope = array() This is one of the most important variable i found to use. So where this can be used… basically AuthComponent only uses username and password to validate against. But suppose if you have three fields i.e usertype, username, password then this variable is very handy to use. So let us see how it is used. Below code will only validate admin type users. Another use of this could be like checking a user is activated or not in same way as below. Just replace ` ‘User.usertype’=>”admin”` with ` ‘User.activated’=>”1”` Example :

function beforeFilter()
{
     $this->Auth->userScope = array(
                                            'User.usertype' => "admin"
                                      );
}

Final words…

In this post we surfed through different variables (although this is not the complete list of variables) which can be used to customize behavior of AuthComponent. The next post is about functions of AuthComponent.