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Zend Framework: Zend_RBAC Component Proposal

Table of Contents

1. Overview

Zend_RBAC is a component used to determine if a user (subject), member of one or more roles, has access to a resource.

2. References

• 1 RBAC Specification
• 2 Wikipedia

3. Component Requirements, Constraints, and Acceptance Criteria

• A user CAN be member of one or more roles
• A role CAN be the parent of one or more other roles
• An object CAN be assigned to one or more roles
• If a user is member of a role (or any of the role's childs) to which the
  requested object was assigned, the user MUST be allowed access. Otherwise, MUST NOT.

4. Dependencies on Other Framework Components

Soft;

• Zend_Exception

Optional:

• Zend_Db

5. Theory of Operation

Zend_Rbac is a component that can be used to determine whether a subject (user) that has one or more roles, has access to a certain resource, after you have defined the available resources, roles and users. One does only allow (not disallow) roles access to resources, assign users to roles, and determine if any roles inherit from other roles.

Following example based on [1]:

Interns can do everything a healer can do
Doctors can do everything an intern can

Healers have access to object 1 & 2 only
Interns have access to object 1, 2, 3 & 4 only
Doctors have access to object 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 only

This component is different than Zend_Acl because:

• Zend_Rbac does not feature the disallowing of access, only allowing access, meaning that there's no problems by design (as is with Zend_Acl: ZF-5369)
• It makes a distinction between roles and users (subjects) whereas Zend_Acl only has resources and roles
• It's faster and uses less lines of code (that's what I'm aiming at)
• It's adapter based by default
• It does not use privileges *

* If you want to replicate this behaviour, you're advised to use several resources to achieve this. Meaning that where with zend_acl you have one resource named 'resource' with the privileges 'add', 'edit' and 'delete', you're expected to add the resources 'resource_add', 'resource_edit', and 'resource_delete'.

Some users (on IRC) have suggested to replace this component with Zend_Acl in ZF2.0 because it essentially does the same: determine if a certain user/role has access to a certain resource (but then done better ). If there's a majority in the community that wishes to replace this component with Zend_Acl, it should definitely be considered.

6. Milestones / Tasks

• Milestone 1: [DONE] Design notes will be published here
• Milestone 2: [DONE] Write unittests
• Milestone 3: [DONE] Write working (basic) prototype, commit in userbranch
• Milestone 4: [DONE] Write Resource Plugin, assertions, adapters & FC-lugin => userbranch
• Milestone 5: Drop class interface here (or emphasize link to userbranch, hey, developers are lazy by definition)
• Milestone 6: Get proposal reviewed, updated, accepted
• Milestone 7: Write documentation (or find s/o to do so, volunteers? )
• Milestone 8: Get code reviewed by Matthew/liaison and move to trunk
• Milestone 9: Release immediately, and don't forget to promote Zym meanwhile

7. Class Index

• Zend_Rbac
• Zend_Rbac_Exception
• Zend_Rbac_Object
• Zend_Rbac_ObjectInterface
• Zend_Rbac_Resource
• Zend_Rbac_Role
• Zend_Rbac_Subject

Todo (read: not in userbranch):

• Zend_Rbac_Adapter_DbTable
• Zend_Rbac_Adapter_Abstract
• Zend_Rbac_Assert_?
• Zend_App_Resource_Rbac
• Zend_Controller_Front_Plugin_Rbac
• More_To_Come?

8. Use Cases

The following code implements the given scenario under 'operation'

9. Class Skeletons

For the rest of the code, please see userbranch