Changing a users group does not change the ARO parent (effectively making it useless/impossible to change groups). I tried fixing this home-brew style, but since there’s no setParent in 1.2′s db_acl, it’s far harder than it should be.

That was reported back in 2007 and there was still no solution found in the net. It is also not an option for me to go through the above suggestion in fixing the problem so the the other solution is to find another one or create one. I chose the latter.

Why create a new one?

The other solutions that I found still needs some configuration in the controllers. Since I already have a ton of files, I don’t want to go through all of them to add a line or two. I need ACLs way of doing it all in the background. Also, I am already using Auth component and I want to keep it.

Why did I choose a text file over a database?

My intention is to make the application faster since load time is really getting slower. Since the application isn’t that big, I only have less than 200 lines for the permissions, so a database is just overkill. Even if I use a database, I might cache it anyway so it saves me extra query.

The component

So Permission Component was created. Below is the instruction on how to install it.

1. Download this component and copy to your components folder.
2. Create cake_dir/app/config/permissions.ini

The content for permissions.ini is as follows


[ControllerName]
actionName = group_id,group_id
 
[PluginName.ControllerName]
actionName = group_id,group_id


The ControllerName should be the controller name itself (in camel-case format).

The actionName is also the action name itself (in camel-case format).

The PluginName is the plugin name itself (in camel-case format).

The group_id is the one written in your Auth component. Your Auth component should have a group_id value because this is what our Permission component will look for. It could be a number or set of characters.

Example:


; Group ID 1 = Admin
; Group ID 2 = Member
[Accounts]
index =
add = 1
edit = 1,2
delete = 1,2
 
[ShoppingCart.Orders]
index =
report = 1


Assigning no group id in an actionName will simply ignore it.

Reminder

Use at your own risk. If you found a bug, please post them at the comment form.

Ok, let’s get this started. As the title says, my article is all about TinyMCE + Cakephp. This may not be too challenging or may appear newly baked for others but for me, it’s something worth writing for. There’s just a few blocks of information that I need to discuss and everything we’ll be done in a short while.

TinyMCE is a WYSIWYG editor by Moxiecode which is downloadable for free. It has been integrated with some of the fast-rising CMS in the OS community nowadays. Such would be joomla and drupal. Here, integrating is so easy, so just follow these steps and good luck:

1. Download tinyMCE.
2. Once downloaded, unpack TinyMCE, and copy just the tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce folder in /webroot/js.
3. Then follows the configuration. To make this thing work on cakephp, simple do these:
   1. First, add the code below to the layout(s) that will be used on the page(s) that will have the editor.
      


   2. Add the javascript helper to your $helpers array in your controller(s)
   3. Then, for each page that you would want the TinyMCE editor to show, just add to the top of the view file this code below:
      



Source: Bakery

One nice thing I like about cake is the use of MVC pattern which makes my codes more organized. And I like how the querying is done which is made more simple because you wouldn’t need to declare associated tables within your query if you have already specified the associations within your model. Fantastic! One of the most powerful features of CakePHP is the relational mapping provided by the model. At first, I didn’t want to touch anything in the models coz I was confused about associations. Besides I was scared I might break the code. But when I finally understood how, I declared the necessary associations within my models most especially “messages”, coz in isupport this is often being used and it has a lot of associated tables in it. But sometimes, when you query, your association settings in the model file are giving you too much (or not enough) information. What I mean to say is, sometimes you wouldn’t need some of the associated tables in your query result. So you have to think of a way how to minimize the result, and that is where unbindModel & bindModel model functions are used which allow you to change your association settings on the fly. But as quoted from the bakery section of cakephp.org by TommyO,

Changing the requirements of a bind done in this way means going through your controllers and changing the bindModel call, often in multiple places. Using unbindModel in a controller also means every time a new association is added you may need to go back into your controllers and unbind the new associations in order to optimize your code.

Silly, but true. Thanks to TommyO, he created a method to simplify this using the approach:

binding to other Models only when needed or unbinding existing relations to minimize the size of your result set.

But just an overview, you would just need to add a function within your appmodel. Then in your model class, just define your associations within an array called $assoc. You will see an example from the link. So easy huh?

So in your controller:

<?php
MessageController extends AppController {
function index($id) {
// establish necessary associations
$this->Message->expects(array('Comments', 'User'));
$results = $this->Message->findAll();
}
}
?>

Now you have it. But that’s not all. Ive read another post in the bakery related to TommyO’s method for model associations. In TommyO’s approach, there’s a slight difference on the way you define your model association and the models get loaded *when* you call the expects() function. According to Mariano, the author of the post, he said he’s not a fan of changing how things are done in cakephp, neither do I. His approach is to use the Cakephp way of defining associations in the models and then specify which relations he’s interested in getting back when querying a model. This way, models behave the way models are supposed to. The main idea here is that you define your associations in the model the cakephp way. Then in your controller, if you want the standard result cakephp brings then you don’t need to call expects() (With TommyO’s approach, you will need to call expects() with all the necessary values). Use expects(), only when you want to limit the result of your query. And if you want to unbindAll just call expects() with no parameters. You will need to add three functions in your appmodel which you will find here. There are additional topics included here like “making multiple expects in one call“. And if I’m a little confusing in explaining, I think you can understand it better when you visit the links. hehehehe.

Good luck!