Role Based Access Control

Question

Are there any open source PHP-based role-based access control system that can be used for a codeigniter framework?

Answer 1

phpgacl http://phpgacl.sourceforge.net/ is a generic acl based access control framework

while I don't know about any CI specific implementation, i know that you only need the main class file to make phpgacl work. So i belive that integration with CI won't be any problem. (I've work passingly with CI)

Answer 2

Brandon Savage gave a presentation on his PHP package "ApplicationACL" that may or may not accomplish role-based access. PHPGACL might work as well, but I can't tell you for sure.

What I can tell you, however, is the Zend_ACL component of the Zend Framework will do role-based setups (however you'll have to subclass to check multiple roles at once). Granted the pain of this is you'll have to pull out Zend_ACL, I do not believe it has any external dependencies, from the monolithic download (or SVN checkout).

The nice thing about Zend_ACL is though its storage agnostic. You can either rebuild it every time or it's designed to be serialized (I use a combination of both, serialize for the cache and rebuild from the DB).

Answer 3

ACL is one reason I switched from trying out CI to just using the Zend Framework. With CI I needed to borrow that component from elsewhere, with ZF I don't need to borrow anything.

Answer 4

Found out about Khaos ACL which is a CI library... I'm also checking out phpgacl and how to use it for CI... Have'nt checked Zend ACL yet. But maybe it can be "ported" to CI

Answer 5

Try DX_Auth plugin for CodeIgniter. I am working on a similar (rather, superset) of the functions that DX_Auth have. My set of CI addon's include display of menus (that can be controlled via CSS), Role-bases access controll before controller is invoked and other features. I hope to publish it soon. Will give project URL when I do so

Answer 6

RBAC != ACL - Roland has the only correct answer for this question. BTW of course it is an essential part of a framework to implement any kind of permission system - at least there is no point in using a framework, if it does not give you a well engeneered RBAC system - it might be better using a simple template system with any ORM layer then. It is a common antipattern in the php world, that frameworks like Ruby or Django are "cloned" only as a subset of what these modern frameworks deliver - as a typical syndrome yuo see a lack of good ACL or RBAC integration into these frameworks - what essentially is a joke. There is currently only the Yii PHP Framework that comes with a decent RBAC implementation.

Answer 7

I don't know the specifics on Zend_ACL or the other implementations mentioned, but if they are ACL-based, I would not recommend using them for role-based authentication.

Answer 8

www.jframework.info

jFramework has a standard NIST level 2 RBAC with enhancements which is said to be the fastest available (includes benchmarks) it can operate on a single SQLite database file and is tested thoroughly, works like a glove.

Has a dependency on jFramework DBAL but you can simple replace DBAL SQL Queries in the code with your desired DBAL and of course you can use jFramework in a SOP manner.