Auval_office - a flexible AUthorization policy eVALuator

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Hi ElixirForum,

I was looking for a library to help me implement authorization in a principled way, and looking around, I liked the simplicity of authorize, but I wanted to try out my own variation on the theme.

So yesterday I published auval_office, a flexible AUthorization policy eVALuator.

What’s in the box?

When you define a policy module like this:

defmodule My.Policy
  use AuvalOffice.Policy

  rule ...
  rule ...
  rule ...
end

then auval_office will augment your policy with an authorize function:

case My.Policy.authorize(subject, object, action) do
  {:ok, rule_id, parameters} -> # allowed
  {:error, rule_id, parameters} -> # not allowed
end

What’s different from other authorization packages?

  • auval_office is self-contained.

    It has no dependency on phoenix or ecto. It includes no plug for your web pipeline. You decide if authorization should be a domain responsiblity or a web layer responsibility, and where authorization-related data should be stored.

  • auval_office does not favor one access control model.

    It is flexible enough to implement lots of different access-control schemes, but favors none of them. I believe it offers enough flexibility to implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) and Access Control Lists (ACLs), and combinations of those models.

  • auval_office justifies its decisions.

    The return value of the authorize function includes the ID of the rule that made the decision, and you can return parameters from the rule to augment that information. This enables the user to build historical audit trails, answering questions like “Who changed that data, and why was that allowed at the time?”

  • auval_office can consider context.

    The authorize function has an optional context parameter, where you can provide a map of additional information items to consider when making an authorization decision:

    My.Policy.authorizer(subject, object, action, %{moon_in_house: :seventh})

    auval_office also includes a fetcher facility, that enables you to fetch necessary context values at authorization time. Just include a fetch in your policy:

    defmodule My.Policy do
  use AuvalOffice.Policy

  fetch :fetch_user_group_memberships, :groups, subject: %User{id: id} do
    groups = Accounts.get_groups_by_user_id(id)
    {:ok, groups}
  end

  rule ...
end

    Before evaluating the policy, auval_office will check if a :groups item is present in the context, and if not, will call the fetcher you defined to add the :groups to the context.

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