phpSMACL first release - 0.4.1alpha

SMACL is a PHP library that allows your web application to use a complex permission system. Permissions may be as fine-grained as you may need.

The most useful feature of SMACL is that you don’t need to keep the library synced with the objects in your web application. SMACL provides a framework which allows the library to directly interact with the objects in your web application, avoiding data redundancy (there aren’t copies of your object definition inside SMACL). For example, you already have a table of users, and you wish to use them as objects which can request permission. Extending the SMACL framework they become visible to the permission definition and checking algorithm, without having to notify the library for each object that was added, deleted or modified.

A set of tools is provided to easily create extensions of the SMACL framework, without having to rewrite the code, or even have to write a line of SQL. This version only provides a restricted set of these tools. We only provide interaction with PHP arrays and a MySQL database. We wish to provide a full set of tools and interaction with more than one type of database, for that purpose we are open to suggestions. If you want some tool to be implemented, or have an idea of what could be useful, please contact us through the support forum:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=558194
Or the support mailing list:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/phpsmacl-support

Also, SMACL provides a generic web interface for administration of permission definitions and permission objects. Through this admin interface you can browse the objects used for permission definition (the requester, the kind of permission, an optional resource, and groups).

You can download SMACL in the following link:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=162428&package_id=183260&release_id=407074

This package includes the Smarty library, used by the SMACL administration console. In the future packages will be provided with and without the library. Also is possible that modules of the SMACL won’t be provided in the bundled release but separately. Allowing you to choose which features you want to use.

To find more about SMACL you can visit the homepage:
http://phpsmacl.sourceforge.net

We’re currently working on the documentation. For that reason it is not provided inside the release. You can browse the documentation in the following link:
http://phpsmacl.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Documentation
At the moment of publishing this news, only the SMACL API is fully documented. Keep checking the site for updates.

There is also an online demonstration, which replaces the authentication system of a phpBB2 forum, and extends the SMACL framework to interact with the users and forums of this web application. This extension is included inside the release as an example of how SMACL can be used. Check the text files inside the package for instructions about using this extension.