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How to Add BotDetect PHP CAPTCHA Protection to CakePHP Applications

The BotDetect CAPTCHA CakePHP Download Package

Because CakePHP is a MVC framework that leverages certain conventions to provide a rich set of functionality to PHP application developers, implementing BotDetect Captcha requires a layer of integration code to conform to those conventions. This enables BotDetect Captcha to integrate seamlessly into CakePHP applications and be used according to expectations of CakePHP developers.

Path Aliases Used Throughout This Guide

• <MYCAKEAPP>: your CakePHP app directory (same as the APP_DIR PHPCakePHP constant)
• <BDCAKEPACK>: the downloaded and extracted contents of the BotDetect Captcha CakePHP Package
• <BDLIB>: the downloaded and extracted contents of the BotDetect PHP Captcha library

For convenience purposes we are providing the BotDetect Captcha CakePHP integration code packaged as a CakePHP plugin.

You can get the whole BotDetect Captcha CakePHP integration package here. Included in this package is the integration code, a basic Captcha validation sample, and a sample showing use of BotDetect Captcha with CakePHP FormHelper and model validation.

(The BotDetect Captcha PHP Library is a required and separate download availablehere.)

The BotDetect CAPTCHA CakePHP Plugin

BotDetect CakePHP Plugin code, sans the Captcha library, is located at<BDCAKEPACK>/app/Plugin/Botdetect.

The code includes a Captcha component for use in your application Controllers, and a separate Controller that handles Captcha image and sound requests. This Captcha Controller useshttp://<MYCAKEAPP>/botdetect/captcha Urls by default.

CakePHP Basic BotDetect CAPTCHA Sample

This basic CakePHP Captcha sample shows how to use the BotDetect Captcha CakePHP plugin in your Controller and View code, and handling of basic Captcha user input validation.

• Controller: <BDCAKEPACK>/app/Controller/SampleController.php
• View: <BDCAKEPACK>/app/View/Sample/index.ctp

CakePHP Form Model Validation BotDetect CAPTCHA Sample

This CakePHP form model validation Captcha sample shows how to use BotDetect Captcha with CakePHP form and validation functionality by implementing a simple contact form.

• Controller: <BDCAKEPACK>/app/Controller/ContactController.php
• Model: <BDCAKEPACK>/app/Model/Contact.php
• View: <BDCAKEPACK>/app/View/Contact/index.ctp

The provided samples are available inside of a single CakePHP app via their respective controllers (http://<MYCAKEAPP>/sample and http://<MYCAKEAPP>/contact). You can copy the whole preconfigured CakePHP app from the BotDetect Captcha CakePHP Package somewhere on your development web server and examine it there.

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1. Include BotDetect CAPTCHA in Your CakePHP MVC Application

Copy the Necessary BotDetect CAPTCHA Files

The base BotDetect Captcha library and CakePHP MVC Captcha integration code are distributed separately and need to be merged so you can use them in your CakePHP app.

1. BotDetect CakePHP CAPTCHA Plugin

Copy (the whole directory and all contents)

<BDCAKEPACK>/app/Plugin/Botdetect

to

<MYCAKEAPP>/Plugin/Botdetect

2. BotDetect CAPTCHA Library Code

Copy (the whole directory and all contents)

<BDLIB>/lib

to

<MYCAKEAPP>/Plugin/Botdetect/lib

3. Public BotDetect Resources

Copy (the whole directory and all contents)

<BDLIB>/lib/botdetect/public

to

<MYCAKEAPP>/webroot/botdetect/public

Public Captcha resources (icon images, JavaScript and Css files) need to be available via Url. It is possible to use a different location for them than the one shown above, but then you have to also adjust the <MYCAKEAPP>/Plugin/Botdetect/lib/botdetect/CaptchaConfig.php fileCaptcha Url settings.

Load the BotDetect CAPTCHA Plugin in Your CakePHP Application

Your CakePHP app needs to be made aware of the BotDetect Captcha plugin. This is done inside your application's bootstrap (<MYCAKEAPP>/Config/bootstrap.php).

You can use either

CakePlugin::loadAll();

or

CakePlugin::load('Botdetect');

at the end of your bootstrap.php file.

Please note that the whole MVC Captcha library is not loaded at every request; this is just letting the CakePHP application know about the plugin and leverages Cake's lazy-loading infrastructure to load the BotDetect code when it's actually needed.

That's it. BotDetect Captcha is ready to be used in your CakePHP application.

A Note On PHP Session Persistence

The BotDetect Captcha Library requires persistent per-user server storage to work properly. By default, it uses standard PHP Sessions, which is convenient in most use cases.

If your environment requires a different approach to handling Session data, you can implement your own Captcha persistence methods via the provided BotDetect Captcha persistence hooks in the lib/botdetect/CaptchaConfig.php file.

Also, the BotDetect Captcha CakePHP integration code has a single direct call tosession_start() to make sure the Session is available for the component at the time of loading. This call is located in the startup method for the component, in<MYCAKEAPP>/Plugin/Botdetect/Controller/Component/CaptchaComponent.php, lines 9-11.

If your CakePHP application is handling Sessions in a non-standard way (i.e. there is no PHP$_SESSION global available), you may need to remove this call, as well as implementing the config file changes mentioned above.

2. Display BotDetect CAPTCHA In Your CakePHP View

Before displaying the Captcha in your View, the related Controller needs to load the BotDetect component and set a proper name for your Captcha instance. It also needs to pass the Captcha markup to the View, which can then display it alongside other form elements.

Load the BotDetect CAPTCHA CakePHP Component

The BotDetect CakePHP Captcha plugin uses the usual method of loading and configuring components inside of CakePHP.

class SampleController extends AppController {
  // Your controller

  var $components = array(
    'Botdetect.Captcha' => array(
      'CaptchaId' => 'SampleCaptcha', // a unique Id for the Captcha instance
      'UserInputId' => 'CaptchaCode' // Id of the Captcha code input textbox
    )
  );

The BotDetect MVC Captcha component is available in CakePHP code under the Botdetectplugin namespace. It's loaded to the $components array in your Controller, and is supplied a unique name through the CaptchaId component setting. Each individual Controller action including Captcha validation should use a unique CaptchaId value to avoid persistence name clashes.

The additional UserInputId setting is used to setup client-side functionality operating on the Captcha code input field.

Pass the BotDetect CAPTCHA HTML Markup to the CakePHP View

The CakePHP MVC Captcha component generates its own markup, which should be made available to your View. The Captcha Html is retrieved by calling the Html() method on theCaptcha component object. It is then made available to the view by setting a variable withController::set().

class SampleController extends AppController {
  // Your controller
  
  var $components = array(
    'Botdetect.Captcha' => array(
      'CaptchaId' => 'SampleCaptcha', // a unique Id for the Captcha instance
      'UserInputId' => 'CaptchaCode' // Id of the Captcha code input textbox
    )
  );

  public function index(){
    // your controller action
    $this->set('captchaHtml', $this->Captcha->Html());
  }
}

The Captcha markup is now available inside your View's $captchaHtml variable.

Compose Your CakePHP View With BotDetect CAPTCHA Display

Inside your View's .ctp script, you should include some form elements alongside the Captcha display. You can use either straight markup or the CakePHP FormHelper. In a regular form with a submit button, you need an input field where the user retypes the characters shown in the Captcha image.

You display the image by outputting the $captchaHtml variable from the previous step:

echo $this->Form->create(false, array('action' => 'index'));
echo $captchaHtml;
echo $this->Form->input('CaptchaCode');
echo $this->Form->submit();
echo $this->Form->end();

You also need to add the BotDetect Captcha layout stylesheet, which CakePHP will include in the <head> of your page containing the Captcha:

$this->Html->css(array('/botdetect/public/lbd_layout'), 'stylesheet', 
  array('inline' => false));

The Captcha should now be visible and functioning in your View.

3. Validate the CAPTCHA In Your CakePHP Controller

After your Captcha is displayed alongside a form input field, you will want to validate the user submitted Captcha code in the Controller action. This should always be done before any sensitive processing, to confirm the submitted data is actually entered by a person and not a bot.

Validate the Submitted CAPTCHA Code User Input

The validation of Captcha code input should be done in the Controler->Action that is on the receiving end of the form submission (where the form action points to).

Usually, the submitted form data is available inside the CakePHP request object, by the same name you gave the Captcha code input field on the form where it was displayed. For example:$this->request->data['CaptchaCode'].

It is then a matter of calling the Validate() method of the Captcha component object and passing it the user input.

// assuming "CaptchaCode" input field id
$isHuman = $this->Captcha->Validate($this->request->data['CaptchaCode']);

unset($this->request->data['CaptchaCode']);

After Captcha validation, it is best to clear the previous user input automatically; since each Captcha code can only be validated once regardless of the validation result, keeping previous user input makes no sense.

Handle CAPTCHA Validation Failure / Success

You should then write some code to handle both Captcha validation success and failure. If it failed, you should abort further processing and display an error message; if it succeeded, you can proceed with the protected form action:

if ($isHuman) {
  // TODO: Captcha validation passed:
  // continue with form processing, knowing the submission was made by a human
} else {
  // TODO: Captcha validation failed:
  // abort sensitive action, return an error message
}

This will ensure that the sensitive action can not be automated and is only performed when a human fills out the form.

Setting id of input wrapper div in cakephp and hiding…

It might be a simple thing for most of CakePHP pro’s but at the same time it could be a tricky thing for CakePHP newbies. I just caught one newbie CakePHP developer of my team spending time on figuring this out thus adding it here for future reference. I hope it helps someone else as well.

So this about setting a ID of the wrapper div which contains label and input field in a CakePHP form. Consider the following example:

echo $this->Form->input(‘username’);

which outputs:

<div class=”input text”>
<label for=”BookPrice”>Price</label>
<input name=”data[Book][Price]” maxlength=”150″ type=”text” id=”BookPrice”>
</div>

Imagine that in a case you wanted to hide this entire div and wanted to show some click event and for this to happen you want a ID attached to this div element. By the virtue of CakePHP it is quite simple provided you have read related documentation. To add an ID to hide it by default you obviously would want to add id=”price-wrapper” and style=”display:none” to the <div> element with classes “input text”. Just revisit the line above and write it as:

echo $this->Form->input(‘username’, array(‘div’=>array(‘id’ => ‘price-wrapper’, ‘style’=>’display:none;’)));

and it will output:

<div  class=”input text” id=”price-wrapper” style=”display:none;”>
<label for=”BookPrice”>Price</label>
<input name=”data[Book][Price]” maxlength=”150″ type=”text” id=”BookPrice”>
</div>

which you wanted. Isn’t that simple!

Installing PHPUnit in wamp in Windows7

Installing PEAR package manager

Add php directory to your Windows’ Environment Variables PATH, if it is not already added. My wamp php path is “C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.13″. Check Adding to Environment Variables Path if you are not sure how to add a value to Environment Variables Path in Windows 7.

Download http://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar to some location in your system. I downloaded it to C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.13

Open a new command prompt as an administrator and cd to the directory where go-pear.phar is placed. I did:

cd c:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.13

and run

php go-pear.phar

It will ask you for install as option for which i chose “local” which is recommended. Follow the rest of process and it should install pear in a matter of few seconds.

Installing PHPUnit

Open a new command prompt as an administrator and run:

pear config-set auto_discover 1

pear install pear.phpunit.de/PHPUnit

Specify your in use php.ini file so the PHPUnit could make changes to it. Follow the rest of process normally and it will install the PHPUnit.

Running test case in command prompt

Create a php file test.php with the following code and place it at server root i.e. C:\wamp\www or similar:

<?php

class MyTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase

{

public function testOneEqualsOne()

{

$this->assertEquals(1, 1);

}

}

?>

Now open the command prompt as an administrator and run:

$ cd c:/wamp/www

$ phpunit test.php

It should output the test results as:

PHPUnit 3.6.11 by Sebastian Bergmann.

.

Time: 1 second, Memory: 3.50Mb

OK (1 test, 1 assertion)

Running test case in CakePHP

NOTE: This is tricky.. This comes into play when you try to run tests through your web browser, for example running CakePHP unit tests. As the wamp installer had created two copies of php.ini file, one placed at C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.22\bin and another at C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.13\. In my case, the pear installer detected php.ini file placed at the later location and made changes to it. I guess it might have asked me to choose php.ini file while installing but i ignored it and it chose the file it suggested and thus the following changes to add pear to include_path were made to C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.13\php.ini file.

;***** Added by go-pear
include_path=".;C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.3.13\pear"
;*****

Make sure that you had chosen the right file. Double check the ini.php file used by wampserver. If the instaler didn’t make changes to php.ini file used by wampserver you need to copy these changes. Just copy these three lines of code to C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.22\bin\php.ini file and restart the wamp server.

Visit an url of CakePHP application while debug mode set to greater than 0. For example:

http://mysite.localhost/test.php

And it should show the test results.