CI Authentication via CLI

Within the CLI script you can call

Code:

$success = $this->current_user->login_by_id(2); // 2 is the user id, it can be taken from a configuration file.

or

Code:

$success = $this->current_user->login($username, $password); // The same user, username and password can be taken from a configuration file. login_by_id() is better for this purpose.

Let us say you have a special user, that is to be logged through CLI:
id: 2
username: robot
password: $2F94934860394860348609645690
first_name: I
last_name: Robot
system_account: 1 // 0 means a normal account used by a human being.

For system accounts like this, logging-in from web should be disabled.

And then your cron-tasks can use this account for logging-in. If some task modifies some data, then the system account id will be stored within the corresponding "created_by" and "modified_by" fields (if you implement such tracking). You will know then which data has been changed by a normal user and which data - automatically, by a cron-task.