The SitePoint PHP blog has posted a tutorial showing you how to "take the pain out of user authorization" with the help of Sentinel, a package from Cartalyst that already includes functionality for both user authorization and authentication.

Most non-basic multi-user applications need some roles and permission levels. If you ever used WordPress, you must have noticed that they have a super admin, admin, editor, author, etc. Simplifying the development and integration of a permission system is what Cartalyst’s Sentinel package is trying to accomplish. The package provides an API for dealing with users, groups, permissions, etc. In this article, we’ll use it to create a small demo app.

They walk through the creation of a simple Slim framework application, installing it, Sentinel and other suggested packages via Composer. They then help you execute the migrations to create the necessary tables and set up a basic front controller file. From there they configure Twig templating, the Illuminate database connection and finally adding a Sentinel instance to the application's DI container. They include code to help you create roles for "user" and "admin". From there the tutorial shows how to create a login & registration form, send a registration email, create permissions and activating users. Finally they build a simple administration page that allows you to hide functionality from normal users.