Advanced Security

Advanced Security feature allows you to setup User ID and assign User Levels to users for **Authorization**, which refers to the process that determines what a user is able to do. After a user is [authenticated](authentication.html), the user is identified. The permission middleware of the application can then use the user's User ID and User Levels to decide whether or not the user is allowed to perform some actions to tables and records. PHPMaker supports two types of security at different levels: - **User ID Security** secures data at **record level** - **User Level Security** secures data at **table level** They complements each other, they can work independently or together. Users get their User ID and User Level after login. Before login, a user's identity is unknown and the user is an **Anonymous User**. To setup, click the **Advanced** button under **Users Table**.

User Level Security

User Level Security secures data at table level. Each user level is granted with specific permissions to tables in the database. There are 2 types of User Level Security: - **Static User Levels** - User Levels are defined in the project and cannot be changed with generated scripts - **Dynamic User Levels** - User Levels are stored in database and can be changed with generated scripts ###### User Level Hierarchy From v2025, user levels are hierarchical, each user level can have multiple sub user levels. A user level will automatically have all the permissions of sub user levels. For **Static User Levels**, the hierarchy is defined in the project. For **Dynamic User Levels**, the hierarchy is stored in the **Hierarchy Field** of the **User Level Table** (see below). ###### Static User Levels The user levels, hierarchy and the permissions are defined in this form.  To setup static User Level security for different tables/views, 1. Click on **User Levels** in the left pane, 1. Select a field from your users table as the **User Level field**, 1. Click the **Static User Levels** tab, 1. Define your user levels, click  icon the add a user level and  icon to delete a user level. 1. Click the **Permissions** tab, select user levels in the left pane and set up permissions for each tables in the right pane. To setup static user level hierarchy, click the **Hierarchy** tab, set up the **Sub User Levels** for each user level.  ###### Dynamic User Levels The user levels, hierarchy and permissions are stored in 2 database tables: **User Level Table** and **User Level Permission Table**  To setup dynamic User Level security for different tables/views, 1. Click on **User Levels** in the left pane, 2. Select a field from your users table as the **User Level field**, 3. Switch to the **Dynamic User Levels** tab, check **Enable Dynamic User Levels**, 4. Select your **User Level Table** and **User Level Permission Table** and the required fields. ###### User Level Table The table must have the following fields, note the data types, User Level ID must be of integer type, the field names can be different though:  ###### User Level Permission Table The table must have the following fields, note the data types, User Level ID and the Permission fields must be of integer type, the field names can be different though:  ###### Creating Dynamic User Levels Tables If you want to create above 2 tables in your database, click the **Create tables** button, the following form will display for you to change the table/field names if necessary. You can change the table/field names and then click OK to continue. **Note** You can also click this button if you only want to add the **Hierarchy** field to your existing User Level Table.  ###### Migrating Static User Levels to Dynamic User Levels If you have projects using Static User Levels created by previous versions of PHPMaker, you may want to use dynamic User Levels and migrate the Static User Levels setting in the project to the database. You can easily do that by clicking the **Migrate** button after selecting or creating the User Level and User Level Permission tables/fields. After setting the user levels, PHPMaker will populate the user levels to the User Level field's Edit Tag (also see [Field Setup](fieldsetup.html)) so administrators can assign user levels using the generated pages. ###### Built-in User Levels
| User Level | Description | | --- | --- | | **Anonymous** | User level for the **Anonymous User** (i.e. users that have not logged in). **Anonymous** is -2. | | **Administrator** | User level that has all permissions plus the privileges to modify User IDs and User Levels. Its permissions are same as that of the hard-coded Administrator. The User Level ID of **Administrator** is -1. | | **Default** | User level with ID = 0. Since User Level field is a non-nullable integer field, if you set a default value of 0 for this field, this user level will become the default user level for the user after registration and before the Administrator assigning another higher user level. | ###### Permissions
| Permission | Description | | --- | --- | | **Add** | Permission to add records to the table | | **Delete** | Permission to delete records from the table | | **Edit** | Permission to update records to the table | | **List** | Permission to list records from the table | | **Lookup** | Permission to use the table as lookup table | | **Search** | Permission to search the table | | **View** | Permission to view a record of the table | | **Import** | Permission to import records to the table | | **Export** | Permission to export records to the table | | **Push** | Permission to use [Web Push](webpush.html) | | **Grant** | Permission to grant permissions to other user levels (see below) | | **Admin** | All permissions to the table | In the generated scripts, the permissions are generated as enum ``Allow``: ###### The "Access" Permission In older versions, users with the **Admin** permission (16) (intended for granting permissions) could access all records of the tables. It was too excessive for granting permissions and is now renamed to "Access", which means access to all records. If you used the old "Admin" permission for users to grant their permissions, you should enable **Grant** permission only. ###### The "Grant" Permission Users with the **Grant** permission (e.g. administrators) can enable users to partially grant user level permissions by performing the following steps: 1. Login as administrator, go to the user level table and click the **Permissions** button for a user level. 1. Check the **Grant** checkbox for the required tables so that users from this user level can grant permissions for these tables. 1. Make sure that you have enabled the **List** and **Grant** checkboxes for the user level table for this user level as well or users from this user level cannot see and grant permissions for the user level table. 1. Click **Update** to save the settings. Users from this user level can then grant permissions for the specified tables in their next login. They can in turn give **Grant** permission to other user levels so that other user levels can also manage the user level permissions of this user level as well. 1. Note that users can only grant permissions that they have. For example, if they have only permissions to list/view for the cars table, they can only grant list/view permissions (but NOT any other permissions) to other user levels. 1. Alternatively, you can use [UserLevel_Loaded](customscripts.html?id=userlevel_loaded) and [TablePermission_Loaded](customscripts.html?id=tablepermission_loaded) server events to call the ``setCanGrant()`` method to grant **Grant** permission. ###### The "Admin" Permission Users with the **Admin** permission have FULL permission to the table. Make sure you grant this permission carefully. ###### Permissions for Anonymous User with User Level Security Disabled If security is enabled but User Level Security is NOT enabled, you can still set the permissions for anonymous users by checking/unchecking the permissions for the **Anonymous** User Levels in the **Static User Level** Permissions tab (see above).