I think using content permissions would be alot more generally useful if had more advanced administration options. Three things come to mind:

  • I think ideally you could control field-specific permissions on the field-creation/edit page.
  • An option to set if default permissions to be set on new fields per role (e.g. new field will default to give authenticated users access to view and edit)
  • Lastly a permission for 'edit all fields' and 'view all fields'.

    • Currently Content-Permissions feels like it sits on top of the setup, and I believe these changes would make it feel more integrated, and of course easier to use. I am starting to try to create the third bullet (with limited coding prowess) and will release a patch when and if I get something usable.

    Comments

    eigentor’s picture

    eigentor commented

    I second entrigans ideas.

    What I see as a problem in handling the module is that by default all permissions are set to forbidden.
    Especially if you got a lot of fields and roles this is awful amount of clicking. If you add a new field and forget to set permissions, on one can use it...

    So wouldn't it make sense to set all permissions to allowed by default.
    If one wants to forbid access to a field this is normally an active process, most fields will be allowed anyway.

    yched’s picture

    yched commented

    I know there was a rationale for making all perms denied by default, but cannot remember what it was. Moshe, if you're reading this, do you remember ?

    entrigan’s picture

    entrigan commented
    Title: Content Permissions Usability and Configuration » Add 'Edit all fields' permission
    Version: 6.x-2.1 » 6.x-2.2

    Updated title to just reflect what I think is the most important and most applicable feature out of my original list of three.

    Also I am curious why it is deny by default, when without the module it is implicitly 'allow' by default.

    daddison’s picture

    daddison commented

    Following, with a comment/question: The Drupal 5.x version of the module (cck_field_perms) has a settings screen where one can define which node types (and fields defined in those node types) have field permissions enabled. Why did this feature get removed in the Drupal 6 version? Without it, the Permissions screen gets unwieldy fast for content types with lots of fields, like say, job applications.

    karens’s picture

    karens commented

    We can't change the default value now without breaking existing setups.

    I think the best route forward to make field permissions easier to set up would be to use http://drupal.org/project/permissions_api, then write some wrapper code to do some of these custom things using that API.

    This could be a separate contrib module or a patch to the core module that would work if the Permissions API is installed. If someone wants to create such a thing, that would be great. I suspect none of the CCK maintainers has time to do this.

    karens’s picture

    karens commented
    Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

    The number of permission elements is already huge and overwhelming, we probably won't add any more in the core module. There is nothing to prevent anyone who wants to create a separate Content Permissions Plus module from doing so and adding additional features in. You can also use the Permissions API with the new module I just contributed at #503118: Add easy reset form to user permission page, which makes it easy to do mass changes to all those field permissions on the permissions screen.