Cake Development Corporation

Why authorize and authenticate?

Authorization ensures someone is who they say they are. Restricting access is a separate process. Authorization is done in CakePHP with Auth Component. Auth works with a database by default, but it can be changed to work with anything. LDAP, Radius, and OpenID are some examples of alternate authentication sources. Auth component has a number of benefits. It hashes passwords, and it provides one API for all authentication sources.

Setting up AuthComponent

Need to setup a users table and create a user model. You should have a username and password field. This will help you make the most of the intelligent defaults built into Auth. After that you need to add Auth to you controllers var $components.

Acl component

Has an easy to use API, identifies, create nodes, checks permissions. The ACL component handles hierarchies with ease, which allows inheritance permission systems.

Auth modes and simple auth.

Auth component has a number of modes, each handles authorization in a different situation. Jeff did a live demo of setting up the ACL tables. Jeff setup the acl tables with cake acl initdb. After the acl tables were set up Jeff covered creating a simple login form and easy Auth.

Using Auth and Acl's together.

Before you can start using Auth and Acl together, you need some aros and acos. Jeff used his Acl management plugin to quickly create some aros and acos, as well as set the permissions for his new user and controllers.

Jeff then demonstrated how to use to the AuthComponent in crud mode. Jeff ran out of time, but covered a few good options for handling Auth and ACL.