Drupal User Management and Access Control

1. Drupal User Management andAccess Control Wade Cline Mohammed Al khater Y. Alejandro Garcia

2. Overview • What is user management / access control? • Why are user management and access control important? • Functionality and database organization in Drupal • Access rules • Roles and Permissions • Users and User settings

3. What is user management and access control? • User management: is an authentication feature that provides administrators with the ability to identify users and control how those users utilize the resources available in a website or system. • Access control: is a mechanism in a website or system that controls access by granting or rejecting access requests.

4. Importance User management and Access controls adds: • Security • Avoids Spam • Restricts access • Authenticates users • Personalized information • Pictures, signatures • Easy management of user accounts • Create, edit, delete, and assign privileges

5. Access Control Module

6. Access Rules • To register to a website users must provide: • Username • Email address • Administrators can disallow access based on usernames, email addresses, and IP addresses.

7. Access Rules • Useful when you want to deny access to all users with a certain emails, username, websites. • i.e. thief@hacker.net • i.e. freecoupons • www.seriousspammer.com • Also, when you want to only allow users with @institutions.edu to create accounts on your site. • User must have an .edu email to get a discount • For example: Facebook's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students.

8. Setting Access Rules

9. Access Rules List

10. If email matches a rule…

11. Access will be denied or granted

12. Structure

13. Let’s take a look to the database… Rules are stored in the Access Table

14. Schema Diagram • Independent entity

15. Roles and Permissions • Why do we need them? • How do they work, how can we use them? • How is the database organized?

16. Why do we need them? • Controll access to data • A user should only be able to view and/or modify specific content • Encapsulation

17. How does it work? • Roles • Access control based on user's assigned roles. • Users have one or more roles • Roles determine what users can and cannot do through permissions • Blocks (such as 'Who's Online') are displayed based on a user's role

18. How does it work? • Permissions • Define how users can access and modify certain data • Many permissions per role

19. Log into Drupal and select “Administration”

20. Under 'User Management' select either 'Permissions' or 'Roles'

21. You can add and edit roles, or change a role's permissions

22. Clicking “edit role” gives a smorgasbord of two options: renaming and deleting.

23. Clicking “edit permissions” allows you to edit permissions for a specific role

24. Selecting 'Permissions' from under 'User Management' allows editing of all permissions at once

25. How is the database organized? • Users are related to roles • Roles are related to permissions • Blocks are related to roles

26. users: role is M:M, thus users_roles table

27. permission: role is M:1

28. blocks: role is M:M, thus blocks_roles

29. User Settings • User registration settings • User E-mail • Signatures • Pictures

30. User registration settings - Only administrators can create new accounts - Visitor with no approval - Visitors can create account with administrators approval - Add text that displayed on the top of the registration page that guide the new user

31. User E-mail Settings • Welcome, new user created by administrator • Welcome, no approval required • Welcome, awaiting administrator approval • Password recovery email • Account activation email • Account blocked email • Account deleted email Variables: !username, !site, !password, !uri, !uri_brief, !mailto, !date, !login_uri, !edit_uri, !login_url

32. User E-mail Settings (cont.) Password recovery email

33. Signatures and pictures • Allow us to enable or disable

34. Users • The user module allows users to register, login, and log out. Users benefit from being signed on because it allows them to access the information they created and allows various permissions within their set roles. • Two ways to create user • Create user as you logged out • Use the administrative user to create new account

35. Create user as you logged out • Click on the link Create new account • It will take you to User account page >Punctuation not allowed except periods, Hyphens, & underscores >valid e-mail >note :This will create an authenticate user, which has all permissions that have been assigned to that role.

36. Use the administrative user to create a new account • Administer • User management • Users (Then follow the instructions on that page)

37. Users - list • This allows you to specify several “filter” conditions. Which will cut down the search and allow a more manageable result. This becomes more relevant and important as the site accumulates more users.

38. Users – list (cont.) We can view the users’ account information by clicking on edit link GO

39. Relation tables M : 1 M : 1 M : 1