Matthew Weier O'Phinney has a new post today looking at how you can integrate access control list (ACL) functionality into your Zend Framework application's models.

In my last post, I discussed using Zend_Form as a combination input filter/value object within your models. In this post, I'll discuss using Access Control Lists (ACLs) as part of your modelling strategy. ACLs are used to indicate who has access to do what on a given resource. In the paradigm I will put forward, your resource is your model, and the what are the various methods of the model. If you finesse a bit, you'll have "user" objects that act as your who.

He looks at the Zend_Acl component and how to extend your model with it to work with roles in a sample BugTracker application providing an abstraction interface to work with identities for your users.