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Simple Authentication and Authorization Application

Following our Blog Tutorial example, imagine we wanted to secure the access to certain URLs, based on the logged in user. We also have another requirement, to allow our blog to have multiple authors so each one of them can create their own posts, edit and delete them at will disallowing other authors to make any changes on one’s posts.

Authentication (login and logout)

We’re now ready to add our authentication layer. In CakePHP this is handled by the AuthComponent, a class responsible for requiring login for certain actions, handling user sign-in and sign-out, and also authorizing logged in users to the actions they are allowed to reach.

To add this component to your application open your app/Controller/AppController.php file and add the following lines:

// app/Controller/AppController.php
class AppController extends Controller {
    //...

    public $components = array(
        'Flash',
        'Auth' => array(
            'loginRedirect' => array(
                'controller' => 'posts',
                'action' => 'index'
            ),
            'logoutRedirect' => array(
                'controller' => 'pages',
                'action' => 'display',
                'home'
            ),
            'authenticate' => array(
                'Form' => array(
                    'passwordHasher' => 'Blowfish'
                )
            )
        )
    );

    public function beforeFilter() {
        $this->Auth->allow('index', 'view');
    }
    //...
}

There is not much to configure, as we used the conventions for the users table. We just set up the URLs that will be loaded after the login and logout actions is performed, in our case to /posts/ and / respectively.

What we did in the beforeFilter function was to tell the AuthComponent to not require a login for all index and view actions, in every controller. We want our visitors to be able to read and list the entries without registering in the site.

Now, we need to be able to register new users, save their username and password, and, more importantly, hash their password so it is not stored as plain text in our database. Let’s tell the AuthComponent to let un-authenticated users access the users add function and implement the login and logout action:

// app/Controller/UsersController.php

public function beforeFilter() {
    parent::beforeFilter();
    // Allow users to register and logout.
    $this->Auth->allow('add', 'logout');
}

public function login() {
    if ($this->request->is('post')) {
        if ($this->Auth->login()) {
            return $this->redirect($this->Auth->redirectUrl());
        }
        $this->Flash->error(__('Invalid username or password, try again'));
    }
}

public function logout() {
    return $this->redirect($this->Auth->logout());
}

Password hashing is not done yet, open your app/Model/User.php model file and add the following:

// app/Model/User.php

App::uses('AppModel', 'Model');
App::uses('BlowfishPasswordHasher', 'Controller/Component/Auth');

class User extends AppModel {

// ...

public function beforeSave($options = array()) {
    if (isset($this->data[$this->alias]['password'])) {
        $passwordHasher = new BlowfishPasswordHasher();
        $this->data[$this->alias]['password'] = $passwordHasher->hash(
            $this->data[$this->alias]['password']
        );
    }
    return true;
}

// ...

Note

The BlowfishPasswordHasher uses a stronger hashing algorithm (bcrypt) than SimplePasswordHasher (sha1) and provides per user salts. The SimplePasswordHasher will be removed as of CakePHP version 3.0

So, now every time a user is saved, the password is hashed using the BlowfishPasswordHasher class. We’re just missing a template view file for the login function. Open up your app/View/Users/login.ctp file and add the following lines:

//app/View/Users/login.ctp

<div class="users form">
<?php echo $this->Flash->render('auth'); ?>
<?php echo $this->Form->create('User'); ?>
    <fieldset>
        <legend>
            <?php echo __('Please enter your username and password'); ?>
        </legend>
        <?php echo $this->Form->input('username');
        echo $this->Form->input('password');
    ?>
    </fieldset>
<?php echo $this->Form->end(__('Login')); ?>
</div>

You can now register a new user by accessing the /users/add URL and log-in with the newly created credentials by going to /users/login URL. Also try to access any other URL that was not explicitly allowed such as /posts/add, you will see that the application automatically redirects you to the login page.

And that’s it! It looks too simple to be truth. Let’s go back a bit to explain what happened. The beforeFilter function is telling the AuthComponent to not require a login for the add action in addition to the index and view actions that were already allowed in the AppController’s beforeFilter function.

The login action calls the $this->Auth->login() function in the AuthComponent, and it works without any further config because we are following conventions as mentioned earlier. That is, having a User model with a username and a password column, and use a form posted to a controller with the user data. This function returns whether the login was successful or not, and in the case it succeeds, then we redirect the user to the configured redirection URL that we used when adding the AuthComponent to our application.

The logout works by just accessing the /users/logout URL and will redirect the user to the configured logoutUrl formerly described. This URL is the result of the AuthComponent::logout() function on success.

Authorization (who’s allowed to access what)

As stated before, we are converting this blog into a multi-user authoring tool, and in order to do this, we need to modify the posts table a bit to add the reference to the User model:

ALTER TABLE posts ADD COLUMN user_id INT(11);

Also, a small change in the PostsController is required to store the currently logged in user as a reference for the created post:

// app/Controller/PostsController.php
public function add() {
    if ($this->request->is('post')) {
        //Added this line
        $this->request->data['Post']['user_id'] = $this->Auth->user('id');
        if ($this->Post->save($this->request->data)) {
            $this->Flash->success(__('Your post has been saved.'));
            return $this->redirect(array('action' => 'index'));
        }
    }
}

The user() function provided by the component returns any column from the currently logged in user. We used this method to add the data into the request info that is saved.

Let’s secure our app to prevent some authors from editing or deleting the others’ posts. Basic rules for our app are that admin users can access every URL, while normal users (the author role) can only access the permitted actions. Open again the AppController class and add a few more options to the Auth config:

// app/Controller/AppController.php

public $components = array(
    'Flash',
    'Auth' => array(
        'loginRedirect' => array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'index'),
        'logoutRedirect' => array(
            'controller' => 'pages',
            'action' => 'display',
            'home'
        ),
        'authenticate' => array(
            'Form' => array(
                'passwordHasher' => 'Blowfish'
            )
        ),
        'authorize' => array('Controller') // Added this line
    )
);

public function isAuthorized($user) {
    // Admin can access every action
    if (isset($user['role']) && $user['role'] === 'admin') {
        return true;
    }

    // Default deny
    return false;
}

We just created a very simple authorization mechanism. In this case the users with role admin will be able to access any URL in the site when logged in, but the rest of them (i.e the role author) can’t do anything different from not logged in users.

This is not exactly what we wanted, so we need to supply more rules to our isAuthorized() method. But instead of doing it in AppController, let’s delegate each controller to supply those extra rules. The rules we’re going to add to PostsController should allow authors to create posts but prevent the edition of posts if the author does not match. Open the file PostsController.php and add the following content:

// app/Controller/PostsController.php

public function isAuthorized($user) {
    // All registered users can add posts
    if ($this->action === 'add') {
        return true;
    }

    // The owner of a post can edit and delete it
    if (in_array($this->action, array('edit', 'delete'))) {
        $postId = (int) $this->request->params['pass'][0];
        if ($this->Post->isOwnedBy($postId, $user['id'])) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return parent::isAuthorized($user);
}

We’re now overriding the AppController’s isAuthorized() call and internally checking if the parent class is already authorizing the user. If he isn’t, then just allow him to access the add action, and conditionally access edit and delete. A final thing is left to be implemented, to tell whether the user is authorized to edit the post or not, we’re calling a isOwnedBy() function in the Post model. It is in general a good practice to move as much logic as possible into models. Let’s then implement the function:

// app/Model/Post.php

public function isOwnedBy($post, $user) {
    return $this->field('id', array('id' => $post, 'user_id' => $user)) !== false;
}

This concludes our simple authentication and authorization tutorial. For securing the UsersController you can follow the same technique we did for PostsController. You could also be more creative and code something more general in AppController based on your own rules.

Should you need more control, we suggest you read the complete Auth guide in the Authentication section where you will find more about configuring the component, creating custom Authorization classes, and much more.

Suggested Follow-up Reading

  1. Code Generation with Bake Generating basic CRUD code

  2. Authentication: User registration and login