How to restrict access to custom component views?

Question

In my custom component, I'd like to be able to restrict specific views to only certain usergroups. If I create a menu item for one of my views, that's pretty easy to do: I just select the access level for that menu item and I'm done.

Now, the problem comes if someone tries to access directly an URL with option=com_mycomponent, or any of the internal redirections of my component goes to a page with no assigned Itemid... in that case, it's the component itself the one that needs to check the user group and determine if it's able to view that page... how can I restrict that in my code? Just a simple hardcoded check for user's usergroup? Or there's a "standard" way for doing it?

I've been checking documentation, and have found this:

http://docs.joomla.org/J2.5:How_to_implement_actions_in_your_code

but that's for what user can do, not for what user can see. I've also found this forum thread:

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=530721

the code at the beginning is quite old, but at the end it's recommended to use this:

http://api.joomla.org/cms-3/classes/JUser.html#method_authorise

How should I proceed for that? Should I define assets for main object generated by my view so I can test access for it with JUser?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can create a system plugin to handle all the request to your custom component before sending control to the component.

Use onAfterRoute event to perform all the access checking.

function onAfterRoute()
{
  $user = JFactory::getUser();
  $groups = $user->groups;

  $jinput = JFactory::getApplication()->input;
  $option = $jinput->get('option', '');
  $view   = $jinput->get('view', '');

  // place USER-GROUP related checking here
}

Answer 2

Here's the code you need to get started with showing you how to see what groups a user is in.

$user = JFactory::getUser();
$groups = $user->groups;
if($user->id) {
    echo $user->username.' is logged in<Br/>';
    if (isset($groups[8])) echo " - User is a Super User <Br/>";
    if (isset($groups[7])) echo " - User is an Administrator <Br/>";
    if (isset($groups[6])) echo " - User is an Manager <Br/>";
}else{
    echo 'Not logged in<Br/>';
}

Answer 3

Probably the late answer to this question. But here is what I used:

In the main controller.php file I overrided display function as follows:

public function display($cachable = false, $urlparams = array())
{
        $user = JFactory::getUser();
        $app  = JFactory::getApplication();

        $view = $this->input->get('view');

        if ($view == 'someview' || $view == 'anotherview')
        {
            if ($user->get('guest') == 1)
            {
                $uri = JUri::getInstance();
                $this->setRedirect(
                        JRoute::_('index.php?option=com_users&view=login&return=' . base64_encode($uri->toString())), $app->enqueueMessage(JText::_('COM_YOURCOMPONENT_LOGIN_REQUIRED'), 'warning')
                );

                return;
            }
         }

        parent::display($cachable, $urlparams);
 }