Dynamic forum permissions in Drupal - drupal

My users access Drupal through SSO and everytime the server authorizes them, it returns a set of permissions (groups/roles), according to which I need to dynamically set the User's forum permissions.
So for example if a User logs in and the SSO says that he has enrolled in a course, I need to give him specific permissions for that course's forum.
Obviously I need a custom module for that, but it's a little hard to start.
I'm thinking of using the ACL module's API, but I can find any documentation or tutorial online. Is there any?
Is there a better way to get around this?
I'd appreciate any help :)
(note: I know there are modules with GUI that have similar functionality but I need to do it programmatically)

We just put something exactly like this into place - we used the Rules module (with the User logged in trigger), checking the LDAP groups that the user is enrolled in, and assigned the role accordingly.

Check out Forum Access. It can restrict users based on their roles.
You could have your roles be something like "CSC221 Student". If a user has this role, they will be able to access the CSC221 forum.

Create a hook_user function ( see http://api.drupal.org/api/function/hook_user ) in your module.
Then using http://drupal.org/project/permissions_api set the appropriate permissions on the user.

Related

How to manage flow of non logged in users and allow a select few to create accounts (password protecting a page)

I have a Flutter app where most of the users should never log in. I also use this same app for a small selection of users that I personally manage and would like to allow them to create a Firebase account, preferably just with by giving them a password to access the account creation page. Ideally I don't want just anyone to be able to create an account, only those who I have personally given access to. Is there a way I could password protect the account creation page so that only those with access to the password could create an account? Perhaps there is another way to do this? Ideally, I'm not looking to get into a situation where anyone can create an account and then downstream I have to authorize that account so that it has the correct access. I really just want only those with the access upstream to be able to create the account. Perhaps this is not logical but this seems to make more sense than letting accounts be created by anyone and then approved by me after the fact. So my question really is, how do I password protect a page in flutter? Or is this just a bad idea and should I work to manage things downstream? Or is there another solution I have yet to consider?
Have you considered using something like a dynamic link that navigates to the specified page in the app when clicked. firebase_dynamic_links might be of help. Only those who have the link will be able to access it and I presume that you could manage the link actions from the Firebase console.
You could also opt for simplicity and create a password field that pops up before your account creation page

Alfresco - How to make admin unable to delete user from Active Directory

Is there a way to make admin not able to delete user from Active Directory? I need to disable this feature some how in global properies or else. I want admin only to create users,edit them and disable them, but not delete. The version of Alfresco is Community 5.2. Thanks in advance.
I guess you mean the other way around:
Is there a way to prevent admin from deleting users which have been created by ldap sync?
or do you mean:
Is there a way to revoke permission to delete any user?
Do you understand the difference between a user which has been created by ldap sync and a user manually created in the Alfresco admin UI?
There is no (easy and supported) way I know of to restrict admin permissions or for a member of the group ALFRESCO_ADMINISTRATORS. The ROLE_ADMINISTRATOR has always any permission.
There maybe a way to achieve what you expect in a customization module implementing a new behavior which disallows user deletion in a specific zone or by creating your own permissionGroups/permissions in a customPermissionDefinitions, setting the new introduced permissions on the user zones to specific groups but that kind of customization would be hard to maintain on later updates/upgrades.
EDIT:
What is your use case for allowing (end) users to create new users inside Alfresco although you have an user directory (AD) in place?
If your aim is to support external users, managed by specific internal user groups you may add another directory like samba4 which your internal users may get permissions to create/delete users (that's what we actually do from/thru our CRM system) or if you prefer integrations with OAuth2 providers such as Google, Facebook, Github you may take a look on the Spring Cloud Gateway for the Alfresco platform project

How to provide service that hosts user data without violating user privacy?

I'd like to start a website that provides users with photos editing/storing experience. The initial idea is that the user has his own account where we store the edited photos and some settings. I'm am a WordPress web developer and when I try to consider how to build such a website in WordPress I don't really understand how to provide such a services without having access to user photos. My idea was to create a custom post type and save it with the user as an author. But as an admin of the website, I will have access to all the created/saved photos and I would like to build it in a way that I don't have it. Is it possible?
I've used previously the app to write a diary that saved the data to my Google Drive and if I understand correctly, it never had access to my files.
So my question is: what are the best practices to build such a resource? Is it normal to have access to all of your user photos if you provide such a platform?
In your case, as you will use WordPress and you are the developer you will always have access to the data of everything.
You will always have a way of knowing which data is from user or which data belongs to another user.
You have two options to do this, but this will take some development work:
1 - You must recreate the way WordPress works where the user is not related to an email and not private data that can relate to the user.
Example: You ask the user to register only that only asks for a hash that can be any word, number, or any other information and a second field would be the password.
With this in the backend you get this two information and do some kind of hash I'll give the example using md5 but do not use it.
After that join these two data and this will be the user.
and to login the user needs to repeat this information and will be within the platform. With this you will be able to maintain the anonymity of the user and will not know who the user is.
In this option you will have for each hash and password a different user :)
But I recommend not using wordpress if you choose this option. You can use a framework like CodeIgniter for example which is super simple.
2 - The second way would be to use the normal wp User, not worrying about who the user is and their information. But one way to keep photo information "anonymous" is to generate a unique hash with each user and have some way of relating the user to it.
Example: When uploading a file to edit it will generate a passkey, you must warn the user that when they want to edit this photo or view they will need to type it into an input. With this you will not know which information is from which user. but it requires extra work for the user
This way you will always have anonymity of user information. I hope I helped you somehow.

How can you hide something from registered users but display it to anonymous users?

This is for Plone 4. It is quite a general problem. I have a form (ploneformgen) that I want anonymous users to see and fill in, but I want to hide it from registered users (i.e., users who have logged in). Similarly, I have a "log in" link in the navigation menu. Obviously, anonymous users should see that, but logged-in users shouldn't have to see it. I've tried many options which I won't detail here (workflows, scripts that change local permission settings, etc.) since none of them have worked. There must be a standard way of doing this, but I can't work out what it is.
Any ideas?
Untested, but it might work: Products.AutoRole can assign groups and roles to visitors based on their IP, without creating user accounts for them. It also has a switch to only give automatic roles/groups to anonymous users. A rule 255.255.255.255/0 should match all IPs, so all anonymous users get a group, and you can make the form private and visible to that group.
(Note that AutoRole is not IPv6-ready, though, and has caveats regarding user inheritance, particularly: it will de facto disable the admin account, so you should not activate it in your Plone instance, but in the Zope server acl_users, if at all possible.)
Another untested idea.
There's a not a very know product and I never used it in a production environment (but in my tests it works perfectly): collective.subtractiveworkflow (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/collective.subtractiveworkflow) and the use of workflow chain.
In practice you can design a second workflow where View permission will be subtracted from Member roles.
To be honest I'm not 100% sure of how this can work with Anonymous, just because normally you can't define permission for Anon users but not given to other roles. This can be the same in that situation.

Properties which handles by Drupal 7 default User Login Process

I'm a new to Drupal but I just want to hack/customize the login function of Drupal 7, like hardcoding. As i have discovered that Drupal 7 login process is handling by user.module and its associated files.
I just wanna know which kinds of values or properties are returning or providing when a user logging/authentication process is done by providing just Username/Password.
The final properties it returns, to provide back to Drupal (along the whole authentication process) that I just noticed so far are:
{uid} of the attempted user
{rid} role id of the user
user email
user is blocked or not
then .. ?
The point is .. what other else?
Can i replace/modify the whole existing authentication process? (as i need)
For example, one of the default auth functions in user.module:
function user_authenticate($name, $password) {
..
return $uid;
}
For example, if i modify (hardcode) that function to connect to my other external database(s) and return {user id}, the Drupal will get one auth requirement {uid}. Then what other else to provide? User Role and .. etc etc ?
Like that .. what other functions and properties else should i touch and provide back to Drupal along the authentication process?
This is not an actual answer but I cannot post this as a comment.
Basically we do not hack core. So looking at the user.module's code will not help you very much than learning the hooks. For an example, It's difficult to get an idea about how to add some magic when a node is created by looking at the code of hook_nodeapi(). But if you check the docs and the return/input arguments, it's much easier to do the job.
I'd start by adding an extra submit handler to login form using hook_form_alter(). I have seen some other threads from you about your use case but unfortunately it's difficult to provide a sample code for you.. You can see how other modules implement extra authentication (e.g: http://bit.ly/LdRcm6). (See how Remember Me module adds a checkbox to login form and twitter module that allows twitter login).
Then, you can have Drupal to authenticate the user as normal, and your new custom functionality in addition the Drupal's authentication.
Drupal can even connect to external databases no matter if it's Drupal or not.
As you can see in many functions, they returns a Boolean value or sometimes, the user ID. user_load() is the function that loads a basic user object.
Remember it's modular. Some modules can include/remove/alter these values using hook_user_load(). user terms module and profile module is a perfect example here. It includes profile field information when other modules require user information.
A single user is not just a set of information. It can be modified during any part of the process. So do that. Use your module to provide information that your external site has.
{uid} of the attempted user
{rid} role id of the user
user email
user is blocked or not
user last login time.
user register date.
...
To see the entire object for your site, enter the following.
<pre>
<?php
$user_account = user_load (1);
print_r($user_account);
?>
</pre>
You can enter this code in a node create page where you have php filter used.
Without hardcoding, you can allow other modules to make use of these values. Even if your source database has no role ID, you can ive them a role ID, a user ID, and such.
Good luck!
Drupal is an extensible system. There is no need to do "hardcoding" in core modules like the "user" module. You should rather explore the hook system that allows extending the core (and also contributed) modules.
And in case you want to fetch user id's from a different database (I am not clear about this usecase), you can still use the roles, and other user data, from Drupal's database.

Resources