CakePHP 2 AuthComponent - cakephp

Question

I cannot login any users using AuthComponent.
The user table's name is users, with some important fields such as user_id, user_password, there is no hashing on the password field.
This is my AppController
class AppController extends Controller {
public $components = array(
'Session',
'Auth' => array(
'loginRedirect' => array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'index'),
'logoutRedirect' => array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'home'),
'authError' => 'You cannot view this page',
'authorize' => array('controller')
)
);
public function isAuthorize($user) {
return true;
}
public function beforeFilter() {
$this->Auth->allow('home');
}
}
This is my UsersController
class UsersController extends AppController {
public function login() {
if ($this->request->is('post')) {
if ($this->Auth->login()) {
$this->redirect($this->Auth->redirect());
} else {
$this->Session->setFlash('Cannot login in');
}
}
}
}
This is my User model.
class User extends AppModel {
public $name = 'User';
public $primaryKey = 'user_id';
public $belongsTo = 'Group';
}
This is my View
<h2>Login</h2>
<?php
echo $this->Form->create();
echo $this->Form->input('user_id', array('label' => 'User ID', 'type' => 'text'));
echo $this->Form->input('user_password', array('label' => 'Password', 'type' => 'password'));
echo $this->Form->end('Login');
?>
When I typed corrected user_id and password then pressed the Login button, I got the message from the UsersController that I cannot login. What went wrong here???
Also, I really don't understand about the concept of AuthComponent:login(), how does it work to check user_id and password againt the database, how doest it know which field conttains user_id, and which one contains the password???
Please help.
Thanks.
Kongthap

Answer 1

A few things I noticed:
public function isAuthorize($user) {
This method is missing a 'd' on the end. It should be
public function isAuthorized($user) {
Next, by default, Cake expects to identify the user by fields named 'username' and 'password'. So, if you want to change that, you'll need to do this:
class AppController extends Controller {
public $components = array(
'Session',
'Auth' => array(
'loginRedirect' => array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'index'),
'logoutRedirect' => array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'home'),
'authError' => 'You cannot view this page',
'authorize' => array('controller'),
'authenticate' => array(
'Form' => array( // THIS IS WHERE YOU CHANGE THE DEFAULT FIELDS
'fields' => array('username' => 'user_id','password' => 'user_password')
)
)
)
);
That code isn't tested but should set you on the right track. But as Dave said, it's really worth reading through the complete doco to understand how it all works: http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-libraries/components/authentication.html
Last, I'm not sure that 'user_id' is a good choice of column name. You'd expect a column name of 'user_id' to be a foreign key in some table, pointing to the 'id' column of a 'users' table. If that's not the function it serves, you should probably go with a different name.