Module A2 · Operate and ship

Give a player permissions, four ways

Every framework has its own admin menu, its own command names, and its own docs page. Underneath all of them is one system: Cfx ACE. Learn ACE once and the four frameworks stop looking like four problems and start looking like one foundation with four thin layers on top. By the end you will be able to hand any player admin on a vanilla server, then do the same the framework way on ESX, QBCore, and Qbox without guessing.

You'll build: A permissions.cfg that promotes a real player to admin on Cfx ACE, then the exact lines to layer ESX, QBCore, or Qbox on top of it.
Time: ~24 minutes
You need: A local FiveM server you can edit server.cfg on and restart, and one player identifier (a license) you can read from the console.
You'll learn: What an ACE principal is -> how add_ace and add_principal work together -> how ESX groups, QBCore permissions, and Qbox groups all sit on the same ACE foundation -> why a job is not an admin rank

BEFORE YOU START

The mental model: principals and aces

Before any commands, lock in two words, because every framework reuses them.

A principal is who. A player identifier like identifier.license:xxxx, or a group like group.admin. Principals can inherit from each other: put a player into group.admin and they get everything group.admin can do.
An ace is what they can do. An Access Control Entry maps a principal to an object (almost always a command) with allow or deny.

So granting admin is always two moves. First you say what a group is allowed to do (add_ace). Then you put a real player into that group (add_principal). That pair is the whole system. ESX, QBCore, and Qbox each just pick the group names and wire their menus to check them.

Cfx ACE — how a grant resolves

code

add_ace  group.admin  command  allow      <- the GROUP can run all commands
                 |
                 v
add_principal  identifier.license:9a3f...  group.admin
                 |                              ^
                 v                              |
            this PLAYER  ----- inherits ----- this GROUP
                 |
                 v
            player can now run admin commands

Keep reading the full lesson

Still ahead in this lesson

Build it: the ACE foundation
How it works
The three framework layers
If something went wrong
What you can do now
Try it yourself