Concept

The permission system in this framework provides a robust way to control access to your application's resources. It works by matching permission types that users have against those required by different parts of the system.

How It Works?

At its core, the permission system uses access types - special flags like user_access, advanced_settings, or custom types you define. These access types are used in two key places:

1. Permission: When defining collections or functions, you provide a list of Permission instances that specify which access types are required. Each Permission instance defines what operations (read/write) are allowed for a specific access type. For example, one Permission might allow read access for user_access, while another Permission enables write access for advanced_settings.

2. Permission Group: Each user is assigned certain access types through their permission group. When they try to access a resource, the system checks if they have the required permission types.

The system only allows an operation when there's a match between the permission types required by the resource and those assigned to the user making the request.

Own data only

A collection permission with onlyOwnData: true grants its operations on the user's own documents only: those whose ownerIdField (default refId) holds the user's id. The data provider enforces it on every route:

• find, find-one, count, update-one and remove-one get the owner field set to the caller in their query, replacing any value the client sent. findByIds and aggregate match it in their first stage.
• insert-one stores the document with the owner field set to the caller.
• update-one refuses updates that change the owner field, in any form, and update pipelines.
• aggregate may only use stages that work on the matched documents ($match, $project, $group, $sort, $facet, …), and no JavaScript operators.

When several permissions grant an operation, the widest wins: one without onlyOwnData gives full access. A permission grants only the operations its read and write flags allow.

For every caller, the data provider also checks:

• options on find and find-one: only sort, limit, skip, select, lean, collation, hint, maxTimeMS, comment, batchSize and allowDiskUse.
• populates: each path must reference a registered collection the caller may read, and gets the owner match of that collection when the caller may only read their own documents there.
• Aggregate stages that reach another collection ($lookup, $graphLookup, $unionWith, $out, $merge) need full read (or, for $out and $merge, write) access to it.

Permission

Permission Types

Access Types

Access Definition

Permission Group