Security Component¶

Configuration¶

$blackHoleCallback

A Controller callback that will handle any requests that are blackholed.

$requirePost

A List of controller actions that require a POST request to occur. An array of controller actions or ‘*’ to force all actions to require a POST.

$requireSecure

List of actions that require an SSL connection to occur. An array of controller actions or ‘*’ to force all actions to require a SSL connection.

$requireAuth

List of actions that requires a valid authentication key. This validation key is set by Security Component.

$requireLogin

List of actions that require HTTP-Authenticated logins (basic or digest). Also accepts ‘*’ indicating that all actions of this controller require HTTP-authentication.

$loginOptions

Options for HTTP-Authenticate login requests. Allows you to set the type of authentication and the controller callback for the authentication process.

$loginUsers

An associative array of usernames => passwords that are used for HTTP-authenticated logins. If you are using digest authentication, your passwords should be MD5-hashed.

$allowedControllers

A List of Controller from which the actions of the current controller are allowed to receive requests from. This can be used to control cross controller requests.

$allowedActions

Actions from which actions of the current controller are allowed to receive requests. This can be used to control cross controller requests.

$disabledFields

List of form fields that shall be ignored when validating POST - The value, presence or absence of these form fields will not be taken into account when evaluating whether a form submission is valid. Specify fields as you do for the Form Helper (Model.fieldname).

$validatePost

Set to false to completely skip the validation of POST requests, essentially turning CSRF protection off.

Methods¶

Usage¶

Using the security component is generally done in the controller beforeFilter(). You would specify the security restrictions you want and the Security Component will enforce them on its startup.

<?php
class WidgetController extends AppController {

    var $components = array('Security');

    function beforeFilter() {
        $this->Security->requirePost('delete');
    }
}
?>

In this example the delete action can only be successfully triggered if it receives a POST request.

<?php
class WidgetController extends AppController {

    var $components = array('Security');

    function beforeFilter() {
        if(isset($this->params[Configure::read('Routing.admin')])){
            $this->Security->requireSecure();
        }
    }
}
?>

This example would force all actions that had admin routing to require secure SSL requests.

<?php
class WidgetController extends AppController {

    var $components = array('Security');

    function beforeFilter() {
        if(isset($this->params[Configure::read('Routing.admin')])){
            $this->Security->blackHoleCallback = 'forceSSL';
            $this->Security->requireSecure();
        }
    }

    function forceSSL() {
        $this->redirect('https://' . env('SERVER_NAME') . $this->here);
    }
}
?>

This example would force all actions that had admin routing to require secure SSL requests. When the request is black holed, it will call the nominated forceSSL() callback which will redirect non-secure requests to secure requests automatically.

Basic HTTP Authentication¶

The SecurityComponent has some very powerful authentication features. Sometimes you may need to protect some functionality inside your application using HTTP Basic Authentication. One common usage for HTTP Auth is protecting a REST or SOAP API.

This type of authentication is called basic for a reason. Unless you’re transferring information over SSL, credentials will be transferred in plain text.

Using the SecurityComponent for HTTP authentication is easy. The code example below includes the SecurityComponent and adds a few lines of code inside the controller’s beforeFilter method.

class ApiController extends AppController {
    var $name = 'Api';
    var $uses = array();
    var $components = array('Security');

    function beforeFilter() {
        $this->Security->loginOptions = array(
            'type'=>'basic',
            'realm'=>'MyRealm'
        );
        $this->Security->loginUsers = array(
            'john'=>'johnspassword',
            'jane'=>'janespassword'
        );
        $this->Security->requireLogin();
    }

    function index() {
        //protected application logic goes here...
    }
}

The loginOptions property of the SecurityComponent is an associative array specifying how logins should be handled. You only need to specify the type as basic to get going. Specify the realm if you want display a nice message to anyone trying to login or if you have several authenticated sections (= realms) of your application you want to keep separate.

The loginUsers property of the SecurityComponent is an associative array containing users and passwords that should have access to this realm. The examples here use hard-coded user information, but you’ll probably want to use a model to make your authentication credentials more manageable.

Finally, requireLogin() tells SecurityComponent that this Controller requires login. As with requirePost(), above, providing method names will protect those methods while keeping others open.