Access Control Lists (ACL)

Omeka S uses an access control list for privilege management.

User Roles

There are six discrete user roles, each in a large part having greater access than the last:

  • researcher: researcher
  • author: author
  • reviewer: reviewer
  • editor: editor
  • site administrator: site_admin
  • global administrator: global_admin

Checking for Permission

There are three ways to run a permission check.

ACL Service

Where the ACL service is available, there are three methods: userIsAllowed(), isAdmin(), and isAllowed(). See Services and Factories for more information.

userIsAllowed($resource, $privilege) checks whether the current user has access to a resource and privilege.

isAllowed($user, $resource, $privilege) can be used to check the same access for any user.

isAdminRole($role) checks whether a user role is among the ones with admin privileges (i.e., site_admin or global_admin).

// Get the ACL service:
$acl = $this->getServiceLocator()->get('Omeka\Acl');
if ($acl->userIsAllowed($resource, $privilege)) {
    // current user is allowed
}

if ($acl->isAllowed($user, $resource, $privilege)) {
    // passed user is allowed
}


$role = $user->getRole();
if ($acl->isAdminRole($role) {
    // allow admin access
}

From within a Resource Representation

When you have a resource representation, use userIsAllowed() to check for privileges on it.

// Get a resource representation via the API manager:
$api = $this->getServiceLocator()->get('Omeka\ApiManager');
$item = $api->read('items', 1)->getContent();
if ($item->userIsAllowed($privilege)) {
    // current user is allowed
}

From within a View or Controller

From within a view or a controller, the userIsAllowed() helper is available:

// In a view script:
if ($this->userIsAllowed($resource, $privilege)) {
    // current user is allowed
}