CakePHP ACL Tutorial: Introduction

Table of Contents

Below are all the tutorials I have produced about this component. These examples all work as of April 15, 2008 with the latest nightly build of CakePHP.

With Real World Examples

CakePHP ACL and Auth: A Sample Website

CakePHP ACL and Auth Tutorial: Database Setup

General Overview

CakePHP ACL Tutorial: Initial Setup

CakePHP ACL Tutorial: How To Check Access

CakePHP ACL Tutorial: Auth Component Example

CakePHP ACL Tutorial: Using With the Authentication Component

CakePHP ACL Tutorial: The Database Tables

The ACL (Access Control Layer) Component works in conjunction with a user login system to allow or deny a user access to pages of a website.

Cake’s ACL Component provides the following key pieces of functionality:

• data management – functions are provided which help the developer add, remove and modify elements that are in the ACL data tables;
• permission checking – the component provides functions which can be used to determine if a particular user has access to a particular page of a website;

• command line manager – a command line based manager is provided which allows an admin to maintain data in an ACL system;

Before continuing, make sure you understand the following key terms:

• Access Request Object (ARO) This is the element trying to gain access to a protected element in the system. This most often corresponds to users and groups. The list of AROs is stored in the ‘aros’ table.
• Access Control Object (ACO) This is the element that is being protected from access. These most often represent controllers and pages of a website. The list of ACOs is stored in the ‘acos’ table.

• CRUD This is an acronym for “create”, “read”, “update” and “delete”, which are four actions controlled by the system. Permission settings are stored in the ‘aros_acos’ table which has a column to store a ARO’s id, an ACO’s id, and a value for each one of four columns linked to ‘create’, ‘read’, ‘update’, and ‘delete’ actions.

Other ACL Tutorials

Here are some other good tutorials on the ACL and Auth components. Some of the examples are a bit out of date in these, but they give a good introduction to how to use the components:

Setting Up User Groups With ACL And Auth In CakePHP 1.2

AuthComponent and ACL for Dummies

Using AuthComponent and ACL in CakePHP 1.2

Using AclBehavior in CakePHP 1.2

ACL with Groups

Tuesday April 15, 2008