ACL Is Back in CakePHP

Table of Contents And This Time It Grew Up A complete rewrite, on purpose A normalized schema, eight tables deep A real admin UI, not a stale admin skin Sync: permissions that keep up with your code Import / export: a real upgrade path Keeping the admin panel admin-only Only the features you want Flexible role sources First-class cakephp/authorization integration Pick your rung: the four-strategy ladder Rung 1 — AdapterOnly: a GUI for your config Rung 2 — FullBackend: the real deal Rung 3 — NativeAuth: same enforcement, your middleware Rung 4 — ExternalRoles: roles from anywhere Under the hood: a service per concern Today’s take on a classic idea So, is ACL back? And This Time It Grew Up Remember CakePHP 2’s ACL? The ACO/ARO trees, the aros_acos join table, the tutorial that taught a whole generation of us what “hierarchical permissions” even meant? That was a big idea for its time — permissions as data, managed at runtime, not baked into code. A lot of us learned authorization…