User accounts

[eluser]pbreit[/eluser]
I'm a little confused. There's lots of discussion about user accounts, authentication, permissions, sessions, etc. but surprisingly little agreement. And little or no out-of-the-box assistance from CodeIgniter.

User accounts are pretty much standard on any web service these days and they all basically work the same way. This seems like a critical and straightforward feature of a framework like CodeIgniter. ExpressionEngine has user accounts, right? How are they implemented?

If I had to take a stab at some of the requirements:
- Registration
- Login
- Password recovery
- Session management
- User profile
- User specific web pages

[eluser]Mirage[/eluser]
The thing of it is that authentication schemes as well as user information storage can vary widely across projects. It's also an application level task, not a system level one. You're right the e.g. EE has membership functionality built-in. But it's also tailored and intended for use with EE and what it - as an application - has to offer. If you needed custom functionality, chances are that you'd not use EE.

That's why there is no pre-defined scheme in CI. CI is a framework for custom development, including authentication and user management.

You can look at Zend Framework. I ported it's AUTH and ACL classes to CI libraries because they work well together and offer a good abstract authentication model. But I still need to define how to store/manage the user data and apply the authentication process to that data in my application.

Cheers,
-m

[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]
Sock and Mirage have already covered the point well. If you're willing to buy into the conventions and APIs of one of the many offerings from the CI community, then it's your luck. Go on and use one.

At SXSW 2008, I asked the Dereks if EE 2.0 was built in such a way that one could pull out its User functionality and drop into their own project. Answer: No. Sounds to me like it's not something on the horizon. Their mantra is "if EE needs it, CI gets it." Obviously CI didn't get it. It already had enough.

[eluser]pbreit[/eluser]
I guess I'll take your word for it. It just seems when I look at virtually every web service out there (that is significant enough to benefit from a platform), they have virtually identical user account needs. Literally, every single one. It pretty much doesn't make any sense to build a web service nowadays that doesn't have the concept of a "user".

[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]

It pretty much doesn’t make any sense to build a web service nowadays that doesn’t have the concept of a “user”.

Valid point, among others. So, the recommendation remains. Either find a contribution whose conventions you are comfortable following, or take a few days, maybe a week, to hammer out something really solid for yourself.