Limit Safecracker access to specific entries, using member groups and categories

Question

I'm wondering about best practice, and if I'm setting myself up for trouble.

The goal: Limit an editor's Safecracker access to specific entries within a channel, based on the member group of the editor.

The setup: I'm using Zoo Visitor for members as channel entries. Thinking of using categories to limit Safecracker access within a channel.

An example: my_member_channel has an entry named Dan, who is in my_editors member group. Dan needs to be able to edit other users in the my_member_channel that have the category "Editor Category" selected, but no others.

This seems to work:

    {exp:channel:entries channel="my_member_channel" limit="1"}

    {categories}

        {if category_id == 1 && (member_group == '6' || member_group == '8')}
            {!-- 
                If the category "Editor Category" (1) is selected, and the logged in user is in my_standard_admin (6) or my_editors (8) member group. 
                --}

            {exp:safecracker 
                channel="my_member_channel" 
                entry_id="{segment_3}" 
            }

                Various fields in the channel to be edited here,
                including a Matrix field with a Playa column:
                {field:my_matrix_field}

                submit button
            {/exp:safecracker}          

        {/if}

    {/categories}

{/exp:channel:entries}

I tested this lightly, but it seems to work fine. So if I continue down this route I'll create "pseudo member categories" to be used in various channels and then conditionally check before showing the Safecracker form.

Am I missing a much more stable approach? I would prefer doing this all using the CP, but can't seem to work out a way to dole out the permissions in a custom enough way, therefore Safecracker.

Answer 1

i wouldn't wrap safecracker inside a channel:entries tag. Fields like title, url_title etc. might collide. You can use an embed with safecracker (pass thru data) or use stash to capture info from the other channel first, and stash:get inside safecracker to show/hide information.

If there are multiple categories assigned, you might also want to limit the output of the {categories} tag with show="" and limit="" parameters:
http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/modules/channel/channel_entries.html#categories-tag-pair-parameters