Building a Page Based on Roles in Session from Relational Database in CodeIgniter - codeigniter

Question

I'm new to codeigniter and just about everything at this point, but I have had some success with feeling my way around php, mysql, ci, and web application development in general. Though, I'm kind of stuck at the moment. So, I wanted to throw this out there to get your opinion on what I'm trying to do, hopefully - you can have the patience to get through to understand my problem and have a solution, as I will attempt my best to give you all the details.
First, I am in the process of developing a web application, to help ease the logging of attendance at a certain organization. I created a member table to hold all the members of the organization, a login table to hold the username and password of members' who hold roles in the organization, a role table, to contain the roles held at the organization, and finally a member_role table to account for any member who may have more than 1 role at the organization. (and of course an attendance table, with Foreign Key to member, but that is outside my current question).
MySQL code includes only the pertinent tables: memeber, login, role, and member_role.
<!-- language: lang-mysql -->
CREATE TABLE `member` (
`id` int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`fname` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
`lname` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
...
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
CREATE TABLE `login` (
`memberid` int(10) NOT NULL,
`username` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
`password` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
FOREIGN KEY (`memberid`) REFERENCES member(`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
CREATE TABLE `role` (
`id` integer(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`role` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
CREATE TABLE `member_role` (
`memberid` integer(10),
`roleid` integer(10),
`active` char(1) NOT NULL,
FOREIGN KEY (`memberid`) REFERENCES member(`id`),
FOREIGN KEY (`roleid`) REFERENCES role(`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
So far, I think I did a pretty good job, in defining the database for this purpose. Your opinions here would be good, since I am a novice, I only know what a newbie would know.
Here's the real problem I'm currently having. I've created a user that has 2 roles. I have it properly storing it into a session, an array of a particular member's roles. The session array returns, roleid 1, and roleid 3.
Let's say I have certain buttons or functions assigned to each roleid. For memeberid = 1, I have assigned to him roleid = 1 and roleid = 3, therefor I only want to build a page including only the functions available with roleid = 1 and roleid = 3. Make sense?
This is where I'm stuck, I have the array, but not sure how to build a page for the user. Should I put the code into the controller or the view? and either way, I am not sure how to populate a page of buttons having only those regarding roleid = 1 and roleid = 3. Hmm, I hope you can understand, because that is about the best I think I can make it clear.
If you do understand, please perhaps if you could give an example of what/how I could achieve this.
Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

suggestion before you try to reinvent the wheel...
if you are trying to build a hrm application use orangehrm and work on that basis to your own needs.
otherwise use this
foreach($rolesarray as $currentrole)
{
//if currentrole is x then do that, if y then do different.
}
you can use this everywhere where you need to display multiple buttons, displays etc

Answer 2

The tables seem good to me except I wonder why you are separating the member and login tables. The columns in Login seem to be just additional attributes of each Member record in which case the tables could be merged into one.
Regarding your question on showing the right buttons for a person belonging to groups 1 and 3 -- I think you're getting stuck because you're thinking about creating one static page for a person with this combination (maybe I'm wrong..?). Instead, you create one page that everyone goes to and at the respective areas of the page where permissions are a factor, you put if statements to determine whether to display any given element, piece by piece. For example, you would come to the "Start Time" button and put logic to display as long as member belongs to at least one group. Then you would get to the "Management Dashboard" and only display if member has group 3 (if not, you would skip the element both in the controller and the view). I hope I understood your question properly.
Regarding whether to check for the permissions in Controller or View, the spirit of MVC is to perform this kind of logic in the Controller. In the View, then, you would check whether the controller prepared information for certain areas of the page. If the view doesn't need anything specific prepared by the controller to display an element (i.e. you don't need anything prepared to display a link/button to the Management Dashboard--you simply need to know whether the person is in group 3), you can have the controller set a variable like $display_management_db_button.
Lastly, user authentication is a very common thing to need in any web app, and CodeIgniter packages do exist for user authentication. I've recently come across Ion Auth which seems to be the right mix of lightweight and robust that I'm looking for, but you can search and find many others out there.
-Gus
(edit)
Example:
In the controller:
if($this->member->has_group(3)) { $display_management_db_button=true; }
else { $display_management_db_button=false; }
$data = array('display_management_db_button' => $display_management_db_button;);
$this->load->view('time_screen', $data);
In the view:
if($display_management_db_button) { echo '<input type="button" ... />'; }
So the logic remains in the controller. Separating the logic becomes more important in maintaining clean code as your program gets more complex.