Allowing users to access API with CakePHP

Question

I'm building a CakePHP application and I have an API controller. This holds some methods that are common around the site, and I use them with jQuery AJAX calls to do certain things. I recently implemented user registration with the Auth component, but now whenever I try and access the API when I'm not logged in I get redirected to the login page.

This is my AppController code:

class AppController extends Controller {   
    public $components = array('Session', 'Auth' => array(
        'loginRedirect' => array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'images'),
        'logoutRedirect' => array('controller' => 'pages', 'action' => 'home')
    ));

    public function beforeRender() {
        $this->set('loggedIn', $this->Auth->loggedIn());
        $this->set('username', $this->Auth->user('username'));
    }

    public function beforeFilter() {
        $this->Auth->allow('home', 'register', 'login');
    }
}

I know I can allow certain methods within my API controller with the $this->Auth->allow() method, but is there any way to make it controller-wide? For example, is there something I can put in my API controller so non-logged in users can access its methods aswell? I'd rather not put the method names for each action in the allowed list, because there's about 30 of them.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Put this in the ApiController:

public function beforeFilter() {
    parent::beforeFilter();
    $this->Auth->allow(); //pass no arguments to allow all
}