Jani Hartikainen has posted the third part of his series looking at access control and the Zend_Acl component of the Zend Framework. This article focuses on creating and storing dynamic ACL lists in a database.

As we have previously looked at ACLs which are hardcoded, we will now look at building a "dynamic" ACL. Previously shown "static" ACLs are good for quick and simple sites, but when you actually require the ability for administrators to define access rights on the fly using an admin panel, they quickly lose their usefulness.

Dynamic lists provide more flexibility in handling the access control of your site - it allows you to only pull what you need (just that user) when you need it. His method uses an ACL factory class to create the Zend_Acl objects for each request. He includes an example of protecting an application used to serve out files to visitors. You can download the code if you'd like to mess around with it yourself.