FuelPHP Forums

In much of the work I do I need to have advanced permissions telling if a person can read or write certain bits of content. I tend to do this using permission_sets and permission_masks. A piece of content can be defined to a specific permission_set which then knows what a person can do with it depending on what permission_mask they're wearing. So I would have various tables looking something like this: permission_sets
permission_set_id
permission_set_name permission_masks
permission_mask_id
permission_mask_name permissions
permission_mask_id
permission_set_id
permission_show
permission_read
permission_create
permission_moderate topics
topic_id
topic_title
topic_forum_id
topic_permission_set_id forums
forum_id
forum_title users
user_id
user_name
user_permission_mask_id What I tend to do now is something like this:

$user = func_to_get_logged_in_user();

$forum_id = uri::segment(3);

$forum = 'SELECT * FROM forums WHERE forum_id = '.$forum_id;

//Edited to fix the formatting, there's no wrap on code tags here......
$topics = 'SELECT topics.* 
FROM topics
INNER JOIN permissions
ON topics.topic_permission_set_id = permissions.permission_set_id
WHERE permissions.permission_mask_id = '.$user->user_permission_mask_id.'
AND permissions_permission_show = 1
AND topics.topic_forum_id = '.$forum_id;

func_to_show_page('forum', array('forum'=>$forum,'topics'=>$topics));

What i'd like to be able to do is something like this (adapted from an example in the docs)

$forum = Model_Forum::find($forum_id);

$topics = $forum->topics;

Without the extra permissions checks the docs suggest it would be done as simply as:

$_has_many = array('topics' => array(
    'model_to' => 'Model_Topics',
    'key_from' => 'forum_id',
    'key_to' => 'topic_forum_id'
));

But this doesn't look like it gives me the options for additional permission checks. Is there any way to add this sort of functionality? The Permissions check would be done every single time, even when the user isn't logged in since there is a default permission_mask for guests as well. So it should be basically impossible for me to do anything with the topics table without joining the permissions table.