Where can I get permission string to use with user_access?

Question

There is a long permission list at admin/people/permissions.
For example there is permission with title Article: Edit any content.
But where can I get the string which can be used with function user_access()?

Answer 1

It's pretty lo-tech but you can actually get it with developer tools/firebug.

If you inspect one of the checkboxes next to a permission you'll see something like this for the name attribute:

That's your permission string: edit any media_gallery content

The more bulletproof way to find out the exact string would be to inspect the module's implementation of hook_permission(). In this case that would be node_permission() which internally calls node_list_permissions().

If you look through that last function it should become quite clear what permission strings are generated for the various node operations.

Answer 2

Pop Devel on your site and head to yoursite.com/devel/php and enter the following:

$permissions = module_invoke('node', 'permission');
dsm($permissions);

The key for each part of the array will be the string you want to apply the permission.

The following will get a list of permissions on every enabled module on your site (modules sorted by name):

foreach (module_list(FALSE, FALSE, TRUE) as $module) {
  if ($permissions = module_invoke($module, 'permission')) {
    // Print the module title
    dsm($module);
    // Print the permisions
    dsm($permissions);
  }
}