Sanction.

Note: Requires PHP5.4+

Yep, another access control package for PHP, including some neat integration with Laravel 4.

Declare a list of roles, the permissions they can access, and any other roles they inherit from as a config array (or file, or whatever you like!), then let Sanction do the rest.

Attaching roles to users is your job, this merely sets what they can do once they're attached - But we provide some helpers for Laravel (and hopefully some more generic stuff soon too).

Basic Usage

Let's say we have a user management app, with two roles defined, standard_user, and admin. Our standard_user can create and update users, but our administrator_user can also delete users, as well as creating and updating them.

<?php # rules.config.php

return [
    'standard_user' => [
        'permissions' => [
            'create_users',
            'update_users',
        ],
    ],
    'admin' => [
        'permissions' => [
            'delete_users',
        ],
        'inherits_from' => ['standard_user']
    ],
];

Apply these rules to an instance of Sanction:

<?php
use Curlymoustache\Sanction\Sanction;
use Curlymoustache\Sanction\RoleLookup\SanctionArrayLookupProvider;

$rules = include 'rules.config.php';

// Build a really simple array of users
$users = [
    [
        'uid' => 10,
        'name' => 'Jim Kirk',
        'roles' => ['admin']
    ],
    [
        'uid' => 32,
        'name' => 'Bones',
        'roles' => ['standard_user']
    ],
];


$sanction = new Sanction(
    $rules,
    null,
    new SanctionArrayLookupProvider( // A simple array lookup class.
        $users,
        'uid' // Use `uid` as the unique user_id
    )
);

// Now we can test these permissions to see if our rules hold true:

// Bones should be able to create users;
$sanction->userHasPermission(32, 'create_users'); // TRUE

// But not delete them:
$sanction->userHasPermission(32, 'delete_users'); // FALSE

// Where as Jim can delete them:
$sanction->userHasPermission(10, 'delete_users'); // TRUE

Features

• Permission inheritance, you don't need to redeclare your permissions for each user, just tell them to inherit from a user with base permissions.
• Doesn't require a database, can be used with an array driver to build user access control lists.
• Caching of permissions lists to speed up page load times. This is totally optional, and can also be swapped-out for custom implementations.

Swappable integrations.

Thanks to lovely the wonder of PHP interface, you can swap out the implementations of the Cache and RoleLookup parts of your application, meaning that this could potentially be used with any framework or CMS.

Cache Providers

To adjust Sanction to work with other frameworks or even just plain ol' PHP, you can create your own CacheProvider by implementing Curlymoustache\Sanction\Cache\SanctionCacheProviderInterface and ensuring it returns the right stuff.

You can then set this as a new provider by calling $sanction->setCacheProvider(new MyCustomCacheProvider);

Role Lookup Providers

If you wish to change how Sanction looks for roles against users, you will need to implement a RoleLookupProvider, which you can do by creating a class that implements Curlymoustache\Sanction\RoleLookup\SanctionRoleLookupProviderInterface.

You can then set this as a new provider by calling $sanction->setRoleLookupProvider(new MyCustomLookupProvider);

Installation

Installation is done via Composer, simply add this line to your composer.json file (PS - versioned release coming soon!):

require: {
    "curlymoustache/sanction" : "dev-master"
}

Then run $ composer update or $ composer install on the command line (if you have composer installed).

Don't have composer installed?

You can download a copy of composer to your working directory by typing:

$ curl -S http://getcomposer.org/installer | php

Then you can run composer commands by using:

$ php composer.phar <command>

If you want to make the copy of composer 'global', then you can move the file to somewhere in your $PATH, like /usr/local/bin:

$ sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Getting Started Using Laravel 4

Sanction and Laravel 4 are the best of friends! Add the following to your app/config/app.php file, at the end of the $providers array:

'Curlymoustache\Sanction\SanctionServiceProvider'

Then add the following alias to the $aliases array:

'Sanction' => 'Curlymoustache\Sanction\SanctionFacade',

This will make calls to Sanction::methodName() possible.

Publish the config files

Now publish the config files, this is needed:

php artisan config:publish curlymoustache/sanction

You should now be able to open app/config/packages/curlymoustache/sanction/roles.php and app/config/packages/curlymoustache/sanction/config.php.

There! Now you can add your role definitions into the roles.php config file.

Run the migration

Run the migration from the package, this will install a roles table into your database, allowing you to persist role information for users.

Simply run:

$ php artisan migrate --package="curlymoustache/sanction"

Eloquent Extension

Are you using the default Eloquent user model? Good news then! There's a PHP Trait that you can include into your User model to enable some shortcuts.

Just use the trait in your User model:

<?php

use Illuminate\Auth\UserInterface;
use Illuminate\Auth\Reminders\RemindableInterface;

class User extends Eloquent implements UserInterface, RemindableInterface {

    use Curlymoustache\Sanction\Extensions\EloquentExtension;

...

This will allow to use the following methods:

Remember that to use this extension, your model must extend the Eloquent class, and be using id as the primary key.

Clear the permissions cache with Artisan

When you update app/config/packages/curlymoustache/sanction/roles.php with caching enabled in the config file, you will need to clear the permissions cache for your new rules to take effect.

Sanction provides a handy artisan command to do so, this will call the delete method on whatever cache_provider you have setup in config.php.

$ php artisan sanction:cleanup

Or if you want to do it in your code somewhere, call:

$sanction->getCacheProvider()->delete();

More coming soon, stay tuned