cakephp - 用于设置可用导航链接的每个控制器操作的回调函数

Question

I'm trying to achieve something so basic in my cakephp-app, that I'm quite surprised I didn't easily find a solution to it...

What I just want to do is to set available links for my app's main navigation depending on the user being logged in or not and if he is, depending on his role (which is stored in the users-table).

So basically a function like this:

if(!$this->request->is('ajax')) {
    if(_user_is_not_logged_in_) {
        $availableNavItems = array('login','help');
        }
    else {
        if($this->Auth->User('role') == 'user') {
            $availableNavItems = array('something','something else','whatever','help','logout');
        }
        elseif($this->Auth->User('role') == 'admin') {
            $availableNavItems = array('something','something else','whatever','admin-tool','user management','help','logout');
        }
    }
    // set available pages for layout
    $this->set('availableNavItems',$availableNavItems);
}

In my layout of course I would create a navbar with links to those available pages.

The only question I have - where would I put code like the above? Is there any callback-function I could put in AppController which cakephp calls on every request? And, what would be a good way to check what I wrote as pseudo-code "_user_is_not_logged_in_" above?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

if(_user_is_not_logged_in_) {

could be written as

if(!$this->Auth->user('id')){

And you could put the function in your beforeRender method of your AppController, which executes on every request, right before the view is rendered.

Also of note is the beforeFilter method, which gets called early, before the controller logic executes. You shouldn't need it in this case, but it's worth knowing about.