wildcards the field

[Bob Ramsey]

Hi,

I'd like to use a mysql database as a lookup to authorize people to edit a 
webpage.  The idea is that people would go to a main login page for 
authentication and then when they visit a page they are authorized to edit, 
they see an "edit this page" link.

What I'm envisioning is a really basic table structure like this:

id varchar (10)
path varchar (255)

id is a foreign key that links back to another table I have with more user 
information, but that isn't really important.

Entries might look like this, with explanation in brackets []:

'ramsey', '/' [I am the webmaster, I can edit all files in all directories]
'jones', '/data1' [jones can edit all files in the data1 directory]
'jones', '/data2/jonesdoc.php' [jones can also edit this one file in data2]
'smith', '/data2' [smith can edit all files in data2]
'smith', '/data2' [smith can also edit all files in data3]

People will generally have access to an entire directory, but not 
necessarily.  Most people will have access to more than one directory.

So if jones goes to http://www.mysite.com/data1/index.php, the php code on 
the page sees that the file is /data1/index.php.  It then needs to find out 
if jones can edit that file.

I'd like to be able to do a single mysql query.

select * from table where path = '/data1/index.php' and user 
='jones';[obviously won't work]

I can use php and get take the current page and turn it into '/data1' and 
then do:

select * from table where (path ='/data1/index.php' or path='/data1') and 
user ='jones';

but I'm curious if there's a way to have '/data1/index.php' match '/data1' 
using wildcards or something like that.

Thanks,

bob




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Bob Ramsey                       Applications Development & Support II
ph:  1(319)335-9956                              187 Boyd Law Building
fax: [phone]                  University of Iowa College of Law
mailto:robert-ramsey@stripped                Iowa City, IA 52242-1113
For Hardware and Software questions, call 5-9124
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