Q:

Why should you use ACL in CakePHP instead of authentication with a user level feature?

Having difficulty seeing the advantage of going through all the trouble with ACL when I could do it myself.

A:

The best reason to use an ACL system is that access requirements may change. A check for user_level > 5 is what is needed now, but it may change in the future. There is a higher level of abstraction in checking if a role is allowed a certain action because it is not tied to a condition. This condition is thus allowed to change over time.

