Tag Archives: cakePHP

Applications, PHP

CakePHP and Symfony

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There are many frameworks out there that have a good deal of uses to them. In this post, the focus is on CakePHP vs Symfony. Does this mean one will be a winner over the other? Not really. I will only present what I have come to find in each of these frameworks and how I have used them in different ways.

Since this will be a comparison, most of the ideas will revolve around the tutorials that each camp has created. Plus, I will be only looking at the latest stable versions, so they are:
CakePHP: 1.2.1.8004
Symfony: 1.2

Each have their own tutorials, and they are at the following:
Symfony: Jobeet Tutorial, using Propel.
CakePHP: CakePHP Blog

First off, about the tutorials.
I really do think that Symfony has a better tutorial. It is a lot more intensive and sometimes confusing, which means it also goes more in depth about what this framework can do, and how to do it. This tutorial also brings in a good deal of real world dilemmas.

CakePHP’s blog tutorial is just a standard blog tutorial, which everyone seems to have anymore. It is a good tutorial, and it does show off some real good aspects of the framework, but it really does lack some of the “gotchas” that would really happen in the real world.
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Applications, PHP

Central ACL Check

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With checking ACL’s, the code I use is as follows:

$info = $this->Member->read(null, $id);

// Check for permissions to edit this account
if ( !$this->Acl->check(array('model' => 'Member', 'foreign_key' => $this->Auth->user('member_id')), $info['Member']['username'], 'update') ) {
	$this->Session->setFlash(__('You are not allowed to edit this user. -- ' . $this->Auth->user('member_id'), true));
	$this->redirect(array('action'=>'index'));
}

While this works and is not that bad of an idea at all, there is a way to centralize this check and put it in the main app_controller.php file.
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Applications, PHP

ACL Implementation

After doing a few posts on Access Control Lists (ACLs), the need to look further into the implementation of ACLs in a CakePHP project could be helpful. If there are questions on setting up the ACL tri-table in the database, you can review the previous postings, or check out the CakePHP documentation. But now that you have the ACL tables set up, how does it actually work?

First, the ACL happens after authentication. So whether or not you are using the Auth component, you will still need to authenticate the user some how, some way. Then once the user is authenticated and logged in, that user will have permissions to do different thing. Let’s say one of those things is to edit accounts. If it is a regular user, he should be able to edit his own and no one else. If the user was a “site admin” he should be able to edit his own and any account that is not a “super-admin”. If he is a super admin then he should edit everyone’s account. However, the first part of this is setting up the initial ACL permissions.

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Applications, PHP

CakePHP Auth error message

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Today is just going to be a quick post. It is Labor Day here in the States and that means a whole heap of people are not going to be working, including me. So I am just messing around with some stuff in CakePHP as I am doing a side project for a local church to put up a calendar. Most of it is complete, but there was one thing that I wanted to change.

I am using the Auth component in my User model. I have allowed register, resetpass, and index. So when I go to view a user’s detailed profile, there is that message: “You are not authorized to access that location.” Which is a fine message and all, but I want it to be site specific, and also controller specific. So the Users controller will have a separate Auth error message than the Calendars controller. So here is what I did.

In the Users controller, I built a beforeFilter function. I set my authorized actions, set redirect to false. I also set a session level variable with the Auth, then I set the error message. There are a couple of messages you can set for the Users controller. You can set the loginError and the authError. The loginError will be the error when the user logs in and is unable to for whatever reason. The authError is what the user will see when they try to perform an action that is not allowed by them, whether it is because they are not logged in (as in my case) or you are using Auth to “authorize” an action.

So here is what it would look like:

function beforeFilter() {
	parent::beforeFilter();

	$this->Auth->allow('register', 'index', 'resetpass');
	$this->Auth->autoRedirect = false;
	$this->Auth->authorize = 'controller';
	$this->set('my_id', $this->Auth->user('user_id'));	
	$this->Auth->authError = "Please log in first in order to preform that action.";
}

So when you want to change the standard Auth error message, just remember to set the “authError” to whatever message you would like. Happy Labor Day!

Applications, PHP

Access Control Lists (ACLs) Part 3

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In the first part, the idea and theory behind an ACL was discussed. In part 2, the set up of AROs, ACOs, and ACLs via the command line was shown. Now in part three, we look at why this is so important. Because an interactive site with memberships should never be static, what happens when a new member signs up? What happens when a member is promoted to an “admin” level? And what happens when users change? This can all be happened via ACLs.

In part 2, existing member were set up as AROs. And with user accounts, we also have to set those up as ACOs. Then those AROs (people) need to have permissions set for the CRUD actions. (Create, Read, Update, Delete). These actions are specific to the ACO, or object they are trying to manipulate. So if a user wants to edit their own account, do they have permission? If a user wants to delete another person’s account, do they have permissions to? With setting up ACLs, this can be checked. But what do we do when a new person signs up for an account? We need to create the code to do this.

In the Users Controller, we need to make sure we use the ACL component is included. So include this in the controller:

class UsersController extends AppController {
	var $name = 'Users';
	var $components = array('Acl');

Also remember that the Auth and Security components are also very powerful components and should be included as well, but the above only shows where to include the components. Now with this in place, we can no address the add (or register) function of the controller.

Continue reading Access Control Lists (ACLs) Part 3 →

Applications, PHP

Access Control Lists (ACLs) Part 2

In my last post, I covered a little bit about what an Access Control List (ACL) was. The Cookbook provides a great more detail.

To go along with the idea of the last post, the application has a few different areas: Users who are members of groups, Groups which have users as members, and Events that belong to either the user or the group. Since the creation of ACOs and AROs are basically the same for each area (Users, Groups, Events), I will detail some code for the Users area making use of ACLs.

The first thing we need to do is create an ARO grouping and an ACO grouping. Remember that AROs are the requester of an object. In this example, we can think of them as people. And people have different types of roles, which is what we need to create for the people. In this example application, there will be site admins (Admins), group leaders (Leaders) and regular members (Members). So we need to create this type of ARO. We can do this in a controller, and a page, or we can do this via the command line.

Continue reading Access Control Lists (ACLs) Part 2 →

Applications, PHP

Access Control Lists (ACLs)

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Access Control Lists, or ACLs, provide a good level of access control on any site. Code bases and platforms may use a different method of instituting ACLs and I am going to go through how CakePHP 1.2.x is handling them.

First is to understand what an ACL really is. The Cookbook has a good page explaining this type of concept. I highly recommend reading through this page. The whole concept behind this ACL can be divided in three parts:

  • ACO – Access Control Object, object that is being requested
  • ARO – Access Request Object, object that is putting in the request
  • ACL – Access Control List, determines if an ARO can access an ACO.

In the Cookbook, they have a very good call out about the ACL, it is not authentication. No matter what code base, or platform you are on, never mistake this. The ACL verification only happens after the person logs in. They can be very powerful together, but authentication must happen first.

The next thing to understand is the way an ACL would look in a matrix. Again, the Cookbook provides a great example of this. The one thing that I would rather prefer, but understand why they do this, is the use of the example. Sure, we all like movies, and the Lord of the Rings is a great way to really explain different things, but it may be hard to switch that over to the real world of coding. So for this entry, I am going to use as an example, and Event Calendar.

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PHP

Queries using CakePHP find()

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CakePHP now has deprecated some queries. The findALL, findCount, etc etc etc. This now uses the find() method for all of these, and has a basic syntax for this. If it is basic, why blog about it then? Good question. The documentation is there in the API, and is there in the Cookbook, it took me some time to really get a good idea on an applicable example and took many times of “trial and error” to help me get along. Because finding is good, and will give you all the information you need, if it is a simple, 1 table find. If you need to query two or three tables, how does this work. So this will go into those as well.

The basic idea of find, as listed by the API is this:

find(
	array $conditions, 
	array $fields, 
	string $order, 
	int $recursive
);

This will find one record based on conditions, return the desired fields (or all of them if nothing is specified), order the results, and go so many levels deep (-1 for just the current table).
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Applications, PHP

Custom Pagination in CakePHP

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To continue on last weeks thought of a “lite” forum, I needed 2 tables (Forums, Posts). Since this is a “lite” forum, I did not want to create a mid-table labeled topics, so I incorporated that in the Posts table. The other reasoning behind this, is that to create a hybrid forum/blog, the topic is really just a beginning post in the thread, so keep those in the Posts table, just mark it as a topic to differentiate this from the other posts.

I created two controllers, forums_controller.php and posts_controller.php. All of the links on the application will point to the forums_controller.php file. The models need to be created, forum.php and post.php, with the relationships.

The file user.php (User model) needs to have a “hasMany” relationship with Posts.

var $hasMany = array(
	'Post' => array('className' => 'Post',
		'foreignKey' => 'post_id',
		'dependent' => false,
	)
);

The Forum model needs a “hasMany” relationship with the Post model

var $hasMany = array(
	'Post' => array('className' => 'Post',
		'foreignKey' => 'forum_id',
		'dependent' => false,
	)
);

The Post model needs a “belongsTo relationship with both the Forum and User models.

var $belongsTo = array(
    'Forum' => array('className' => 'Forum',
        'foreignKey' => 'forum_id',
        'conditions' => '',
        'fields' => '',
        'order' => ''
    ),
    'User' => array('className' => 'User',
        'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
        'conditions' => '',
        'fields' => '',
        'order' => ''
)
);

Continue reading Custom Pagination in CakePHP →

Applications, PHP

Blogs, Forums and CakePHP

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In one of my contracts, I am writing a full application with membership, conference signups, information pages, and a small little forum. This is all per the customer’s request. The solution I decided on, was CakePHP for the framework. It is not going to be a big, full site like a MySpace, or Facebook. It is a small local non-profit group who will be able to have its membership keep in touch via the site. So the main pages are not hard. Most of the pages will follow a simplistic CRUD (create, read, update and delete) format, with the site admins being able to create, update and delete most pages. But instead of having a static site, they wanted the membership to be able to interact with the authors of the pages, and themselves.

The pages are not hard to enable this. I could have just as easily installed a WordPress instance for the solution, themed it up, and be done. Which I was seriously considering, as this already has the permissions, updates, management, etc. However, they were not too happy with something like this. So I looked elsewhere. Drupal would provide a good out of the box solution, but there were problems with the modules, and it seemed to take too much overhead to get the groups, permissions and other CMS features set up for this small site. The next idea I looked at was going the CakePHP route. Continue reading Blogs, Forums and CakePHP →