setting permissions

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

I've been having some trouble setting up the correct permissions in the jforum I just deployed, and I am beginning to think that the scheme I was planning to use isn't possible to implement.

My goal was to have permissions to implement groups that gave access to some number of forums each, and then assign users to those groups based on which groups of forums I wanted them to have access to. For example, one group does not allow access to forum A, hence it gives access to forums B, C, and D. Another group does not give access to forums B, C, and D, hence it gives access to forum A. I mention which forums a group does not have access to, the negation, since the permissions are set up in this way.

When I give a user to both groups, with the intention that they be given access to forums A, B, C, and D, it basically backfires and doesn't work. Logically, I would expect this negation property of the permissions to simply not give access to any of the forums if it were not to work, but instead it gives the user access to all forums including forums E, F, and G. I suppose this is the behavior when conflicting groups both give and restrict access to a certain forum such as forum A?

So this is my question: how do I create an additive scheme with the way these permissions are setup, so that I can have a group which has access to a specific subset of forums that no other group has access to, and then assign a user to that group if I want to allow them to have access to that subset? I would also like to know if this appears to be buggy behavior in general, or if it appears that I may have incorrectly configured these groups given this behavior. In my permissions, all of my groups have access to all categories, I simply restrict the actual forums each group can see.

uniq

ps, this particular deployment has otherwise gone very well and I've been impressed with the customizability (is that a word? lol) that I've been able to achieve so easily. When everything is setup, I'm planning on posting the link to the forum up here and answering any questions on my implementation.
[originally posted on jforum.net by uniq]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

I just wanted to give a more concrete example of whats going on to clarify:

Forum Structure:

Category A
-Forum A
-Forum B
-Forum C

Category B
-Forum D
-Forum E
-Forum F
-Forum G

Category C
-Forum H
-Forum I

My groups:
Group 1:
not allowed to Categories B, C
not allowed to see forums C, D, E, F, G, H, I (can see A, B)

Group 2:
not allowed to Category C
not allowed to see forums A, B, G, H, I (can see C, D, E, F)

Group 3:
not allowed to see Categories A, B
not allowed to see forums A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I (can see H)

When I add a user to only group 1, they correctly see only forums A and B.
When I add a user to only group 2, they correctly see only forums C, D, E, and F
When I add a user to only group 3, they correctly see only forum H.
When I add a user to both groups 1 and 2, they correctly see only forums A, B, C, D, E, F.
When I add a user to both groups 2 and 3, they correctly only see forums C, D, E, F, and H.
When I add a user to groups 1, 2, and 3, they incorrectly see all forums. They should not be allowed to see forums G or I as none of these groups allow them that permission.
[originally posted on jforum.net by uniq]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

There was a bug in the group handling code of version 2.1.6 of JForum. We have this issue fixed in the development version, which you can try out by getting it from http://www.jforum.net/beta/latest_dev.jsp

Rafael
[originally posted on jforum.net by Rafael Steil]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

Thanks Raf, any chance you could confirm that having a user in multiple groups is supposed to allow access to both sets of forums?
[originally posted on jforum.net by uniq]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

If Group A deny access to Forum 1 and Group B allow access to it, and considering that any given user is in both groups, he'll have access to the Forum, as the roles are addictive.

Rafael
[originally posted on jforum.net by Rafael Steil]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

Fantastic, thanks Raf.

I'm integrating the forum into a ongoing side-project of mine that is a website for my guild in World of Warcraft. The site can be seen at www.stratagem-guild.com, the forums listed under the Forum link in the header obviously. The dark style looks much better than the light one atm, so I suggest using that. The light style was something I threw together rather quickly and I intend to improve on it; if you have epilepsy, stay away from it LOL!

Anyway, part of my reason for using Jforum was so that I would have the power to easily integrate it with the rest of the things we are developing. A few of these ideas we are developing on top of the forum I find pretty cool:
1) use the mail server to push a dynamically created "newsletter" to peoples email addresses based on the content from the forums they have access to
2) (concept stage still) possibly allow people to send emails to/from their PM box; as a consequence, we would enable external access to the PM box through applications such as Outlook
3) allow foreign modules to manipulate the forum, for example allowing our "Apply to our Guild" module to post the application directly to a private forum after the user completes the web interface for it (this is already implement, but the process is somewhat rough around the edges since there is no external interface to expose jforums functionalities to other apps)

I hope to contribute my code to this project in the future. One thing I would love to see however, is an effort to get a documented API out there so all of us on the outside can work with the existing stuff in a fluid manner. I know some of you guys have worked on this for a long time so you understand the application very well, but for my part, I don't like spending so much time analyzing the inner-workings of code just to figure out how it works.

uniq
[originally posted on jforum.net by uniq]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

Nice.

You'll start to see the documentaion in the next days. Keep in touch.

Rafael
[originally posted on jforum.net by Rafael Steil]