ACL Explained
Written by Ronald Smit   
Tuesday, 12 December 2020

With the release of RSGallery2 1.11.11 a new feature has  been implemented, being acces control. As it is however in it's early stages, some direction is needed to be able to understand and use it properly. That's why a short manual is written to help you through the proces of setting it up properly and understanding the limitations it has in this stage. This page will be updated as new features will be implemented. 

Below the concept and it's use is described, as well as a short tutorial to set it up properly.


 

 

MANUAL

 

Table of contents

General
Concept
Settings
How to activate ACL
Feedback

General

The ACL Lite concept has nothing to do with the ACL within Joomla, but is an interim solution, to provide some flexibility in setting permissions in Galleries and setting User Uploads and User Gallery creation for the component. This is done on a user group level, so this does not include specific permissions for a single user (Except Administrator and Super Administrator, who can do everything at anytime).

compromised immune system

Concept

In this concept, there are 3 levels of Access Control and 5 different allowable actions. To determine the level of access control, by using the usertype from Joomla, we can link these usergroups to allowable actions per gallery.

Levels of Access Control

  1. Public User
  2. Registered User
  3. Super Administrator

Allowable actions

  1. View Gallery                       (Ability to view the gallery in the frontend)
  2. Modify Gallery                    (Ability to change properties of the gallery)
  3. Delete Gallery                    (Ability to delete the gallery)
  4. Upload and modify Images    (Ability to upload images and modify properties)
  5. Delete images                    (Ability to delete images from the gallery)

Settings

The settings are controlled in two phases, which will be described below.

General settings

Permissions tab in Control Panel
These are set in the Control Panel and will control the following:
  1. Enable Access Control
    If this option is set to "No", no permissions per gallery can be set.
  2. Show My Galleries?
    Here you can set whether  the My Galleries option in the frontend is accessible to the users. If set to "Yes", automatically the "My Images" tab is visible.
  3. Can user create galleries?
    This option is only available when Access Control is enabled. This is therefore an extension to the ACL system on a global level.
    When this is enabled, you can set two variables in the Control Panel:
    1. Number of galleries
      This is the number of galleries a user can create.
    2. Number of images
      This is the number of images a user can upload to the different galleries in total.

Per gallery settings

In addition to the general settings, there are a number of gallery specific settings in which you can control access per gallery.  These settings are controlled in the Edit gallery screen in the backend. When creating a new gallery, a default permission scheme will be loaded. After creation, you can go back to the edit screen and specify gallery permissions. These are the actions as described in the allowable actions section.  Below a screenshot, repsresenting default permissions.

Permissions screen

How to activate ACL

As ACL for RSGallery2 is still in the development stage, it is not fully operational at this time. It is however working up to a certain level.

What can you do at this moment?

  1. Show or hide "My Galleries" link in main gallery page
  2. Set the view, upload and edit image and delete image permissions per gallery.
  3. Enable or disable gallery creation from frontend.
  4. Totally switch off ACL and it will behave as it dit before(but we don't want that ehh?)

How do I do this?

  1. Enable ACL in backend
    Login to the backend and goto the RSGallery2 Control Panel. Goto Configuration 'Permissions tab and set Enable Access Control to "Yes",  Show My Galleries to "Yes" and Can user create galleries? to "Yes"(if you want users to be able to create galleries).
  2. Create permissions for a gallery
    In the backend, go to Manage Galleries and open up the edit screen for a created gallery.

    On a clean install, there should be a permissions box, where you can set permissions. Set permissions according to your wishes and press Save.
    On an upgrade install, it is slightly different. Do nothing special but press the Save or Apply button. The default permissions scheme will be created upon saving. Now edit the gallery again and a permissions box will be present, containing the default permissions settings. Changes according to your wishes and press Save or Apply.
  3. Now you have enabled ACL in RSGallery2.

Feedback

As it is still developing, feedback is greatly appreciated. If you come across any bugs, weird behavings or other strange things, please report in the forums .

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 August 2020 )