Permission

Role and permission based authentication on routes as simple as it can get.

• Requires you to use ui-router as your router module.

Permission is the gatekeeper for your routes

Permission helps you gain control of your routes, by using simple concepts for you to decide who can access them. I've seen plenty of big fat tutorials on access control implementations, and they can be quite overwhelming. So I bring you a simple, powerful, straightforward solution.

Important

Please remember this project is very new, I wouldn't recommend yet using this in a big project just yet as, like any new project, might drastically change over time.

Install via bower

bower install angular-permission --save

Include to your dependencies

angular.module('yourModule', [..., 'permission']);

Setting route permissions/roles

This is how simple Permission makes it for you to define a route which requires authorization.

  // We define a route via ui-router's $stateProvider
  $stateProvider
    .state('staffpanel', {
      url: '...',
      data: {
        permissions: {
          only: ['admin', 'moderator']
        }
      }
    });

You can either set an only or an except array.

  // Let's prevent anonymous users from looking at a dashboard
  $stateProvider
    .state('dashboard', {
      url: '...',
      data: {
        permissions: {
          except: ['anonymous']
        }
      }
    });

Another thing you can do is set a redirect url to which unauthorized sessions will go to.

  $stateProvider
    .state('dashboard', {
      url: '...',
      data: {
        permissions: {
          except: ['anonymous'],
          redirectTo: 'login'
        }
      }
    });

Defining roles

So, how do yo tell Permission what does 'anonymous', 'admin' or 'foo' mean and how to know if the current user belongs to those definitions?

Well, Permission allows you to define different 'roles' along with the logic that determines if the current session belongs to them.

  // Let's imagine we have a User service which has information about the current user in the session
  // and is undefined if no session is active
  //
  // We will define the following roles:
  // anonymous: When there is not user currenly logged in
  // normal: A user with isAdmin = false
  // admin: A user with isAdmin = true

  angular.module('fooModule', ['permission', 'user'])
    .run(function (Permission, User) {
      // Define anonymous role
      Permission.defineRole('anonymous', function (stateParams) {
        // If the returned value is *truthy* then the user has the role, otherwise they don't
        if (!User) {
          return true; // Is anonymous
        }
        return false;
      });
    });

Sometimes you will need to call some a back-end api or some other asyncronous task to define the role For that you can use promises

  angular.module('barModule', ['permission', 'user'])
    .run(function (Permission, User, $q) {
      Permission
        // Define user role calling back-end
        .defineRole('user', function (stateParams) {
          // This time we will return a promise
          // If the promise *resolves* then the user has the role, if it *rejects* (you guessed it)

          // Let's assume this returns a promise that resolves or rejects if session is active
          return User.checkSession();
        })
        // A different example for admin
        .defineRole('admin', function (stateParams) {
          var deferred = $q.defer();

          User.getAccessLevel().then(function (data) {
            if (data.accessLevel === 'admin') {
              deferred.resolve();
            } else {
              deferred.reject();
            }
          }, function () {
            // Error with request
            deferred.reject();
          });

          return deferred.promise;
        });
    });

You can also define many roles which share the same validator. This is useful when you have some central service which handles the validation.

To define many roles which share one validator callback, use defineManyRoles(<array>, <validator function>)

  Permission.defineManyRoles(arrayOfRoleNames, function (stateParams, roleName) {
    return User.hasRole(roleName);
  });

As you can see, Permission is useful wether you want a role-based access control or a permission-based one, as it allows you to define this behaviour however you want to.

Events

• $stateChangePermissionStart: This event is broadcasted before perform authorize.

• $stateChangePermissionAccepted: This event is broadcasted when one of the permissions has been accepted and the state changes successfully.

• $stateChangePermissionDenied: This event is broadcasted when the access to the target state is not granted (no permissions found on the only array or at least one permission found on the except array). This is when the state stays the same or is changed based on the redirectTo option.

Caveats

Because of a bug in ui-router, when using $urlStateProvider.otherwise we get an infinite digest loop error. A workaround was found by @shoaibmerchant and it goes like this:

// Normal usage (creates INFDG error)
$urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/somestate');

// Instead
$urlRouterProvider.otherwise( function($injector) {
  var $state = $injector.get("$state");
  $state.go('/somestate');
});

TODOS:

Help fill this list with your feature requests

• [Waiting for release on ui-router's end] More powerful redirection to allow passing state parameters and other useful stuff ui-router provides. Ideas anyone?
• Inheritance (example: 'admin' inherits from 'user')
• Role validation caching?

Contributing

This project is still in diapers and I would love your feedback / help in making this a great module for angular developers to use.

The correct way to contribute is:

1. Create a branch from the development branch
2. Implement your new feature
3. Submit a pull request to be merged in the development branch
4. Remember to run grunt build before your last commit

Author

• Rafael Vidaurre
• @narzerus
• I'm a full-stack developer currenly working as CTO and Co-Founder at Finciero