Question

I have a User controller and User model. This model and associated database table is used for authentication and naturally there’s a password field.

In my edit action when I call $this->data is puts the hashed password in my password field in my edit view. Naturally, I don’t want a password field with a 40-character value, which will then get re-hashed upon save.

My action looks like this:

function edit($id) {
    $this->User->id = $id;
    if (empty($this->data)) {
        $this->data = $this->User->read();
    }
    else {
        if ($this->User->save($this->data)) {
            $this->Session->setFlash('User has been updated.');
            $this->redirect(array('action' => 'view', $this->User->id));
        }
    }
}

And my view looks like this:

<h2>Edit User</h2>
<?php
    echo $this->Form->create('User', array('action' => 'edit'));
    echo $this->Form->input('username');
    echo $this->Form->input('password');
    echo $this->Form->input('first_name');
    echo $this->Form->input('last_name');
    echo $this->Form->input('email');
    echo $this->Form->end('Save User');
?>

How can I have a form for users to edit their account (username etc) that doesn’t update the password if left blank, but does update it if the user enters a new password into the password field?

Answer 1

The common & most secure method is to have a separate form for changing the password where you ask the user to confirm the change by asking the old password. This is because if you forget the site open on a public computer, the next person who comes in can’t just hijack the account by just giving a new password.

If you still want to go with the original plan, you can unset the variable if it’s empty before saving the data:

if( $this->data[ 'User' ][ 'password' ] == '' ) {
    unset( $this->data[ 'User' ][ 'password' ] );
}

The other option is to list allowed fields as a parameter to save() and leave out password if the field is empty.

In the view you can use

echo $this->Form->input('password', array( 'value' => '' ) );

to keep the hash from showing up in the field.