User Authentication with patUser (part 1) - Dump Truck
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Now that the hard sell is over and you're (hopefully) all set up with patUser, let's get things started. The first thing you need to do is set up a MySQL database to hold your user data - this database will be used by patUser to perform its various tasks.

The patUser distribution comes with an SQL dump file which you can use to create the necessary tables - you'll find it in the "sql/" directory of the distribution, and it looks something like this:

#
# Table structure for table 'groups'
#

CREATE TABLE groups (
   gid int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
   name varchar(50),
   UNIQUE gid (gid)
);

#
# Table structure for table 'permissions'
#

CREATE TABLE permissions (
   id int(11) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   id_type enum('group','user') DEFAULT 'group' NOT NULL,
   part varchar(50),
   perm set('read','delete','modify','add')
);

#
# Table structure for table 'usergroups'
#

CREATE TABLE usergroups (
   uid int(11) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   gid int(11) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL
);

#
# Table structure for table 'users'
#

CREATE TABLE users (
   uid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
   username varchar(20) NOT NULL,
   passwd varchar(20) NOT NULL,
   email varchar(200),
   nologin tinyint(1) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   first_login datetime,
   last_login datetime,
   count_logins int(10) unsigned DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   count_pages int(10) unsigned DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   time_online int(11) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   PRIMARY KEY (uid),
   KEY username (username)
);

Each of the tables above plays an important role in the patUser model:

The "users" table stores information about each user in the system - the user's login name and password, email address, and date of first and last login. Each user in this table is identified by a unique user ID.

patUser allows you to organize users into groups - the "groups" table stores a list of these groups. As with users, each group has a name and a unique group ID.

The "usergroups" table connects the records in the "users" and "groups" table together, specifying which users belong to which groups. patUser groups are not exclusive - a user may belong to more than one group at a time.

The "permissions" table makes it possible to assign permissions for a user or group. These permissions can be used to restrict user activities on a page-by-page basis.

It's important to note, at this stage, that although the developers of patUser recommend using the schema above, there is no restriction on you, as a developer, creating and using your own set of tables. patUser's developers are well aware that different applications have different requirements and the schema above may not be suitable for all needs; therefore, they have designed the patUser library to be flexible enough for use with other, custom schemas as well (more on this shortly).

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