Taichi Access

Taichi Access is a simple access control system following *nix like system style.

Simple Tutorial

If you have a blog system, you may several users, for example: admin, bloger, visiter. They are exactly roles for grouping users. So let's define several users in json format:

	{id:1, name:'yarco', roles:['admin']}
	{id:2, name:'a dog', roles:['blog']}
	{id:0, name:'anonymous', roles:['guest']}

Now we have three guys (or maybe two guys with a dog). yarco(me) is an admin, 'a dog' is a bloger and anonymous is a visiter.
We don't care about how/where those data comes from, but in our access control system, user must has two fields: id and roles.

Let's go on defining our resource -- blog:

	{id:1000, type:'blog', title:'i\'m a good dog', owner: {id:2}}

See, the dog bloger write his first article. Let's say he is the owner of that article.
A resource must also has two fields: type and owner.

Finally, we need to define our permission rules.

	{id:1, type:'blog', permissions:{everyone:'read'}}

Now we could use our Taichi Access module to check the permission on those above guys.

var access = require('taichi-access');

access.id = 'id'; // this indicate the key word is 'id', if you are using something like {_id:1}, then it should be _id
access.rules = [
	{id:1, type:'blog', permissions:{everyone:'read'}}
];

var admin = {id:1, name:'yarco', roles:['admin']};
var bloger = {id:2, name:'a dog', roles:['blog']};
var visiter = {id:0, name:'anonymous', roles:['guest']};

var resource = {id:1000, type:'blog', title:'i\'m a good dog', owner: {id:2}};

access.checkUser('delete', admin, resource); // true, cause admin has delete rights 
access.checkUser('delete', bloger, resource); // true, cause bloger is the owner of the resource
access.checkUser('write', visiter, resource); // false, cause visiter don't have rights to write blog
access.checkUser('read', visiter, resource); // true, cause everyone = read is set in permissions

// you could also do

access.user = visiter;
access.check('delete', resource); 
access.check('read', resource);

Interface

• Getter/Setter
  • id -- set/get the key name
  • user -- set/get the user you want to check
  • rules -- set/get access rules
• Methods
  • check(permission, resource) -- check permission on some resource
  • checkUser(permission, user, resource) -- check permission on some resource for someone

Notice

• You could only set one rule for one resource type
• resource type == role name except three predefined role names: "guest", "user", "admin"

About Author

I'm Yarco, from China. A Sr. PHPer, begin to learn Node.js.

• Name: Yarco (Jun Wong)
• Timezone: GMT/UTC +08:00
• Skype: yarco_wang
• Related Links: Home Page Linkedin Freelancer Github