@inhauth/core

Inherited Authorization

Наследуемая авторизация иерархических структур

About Problem

This is the dog, that worried the cat,
That kill'd the rat, that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

Suppose, you have hierarchy structure like a filesystem. You want to inherit authorization rules downside. You have 2 options:

• check rules on each request upward (ask about auth rules of file, then of its folder, then of grandfolder, etc.)
• update rules on whole subtree on every auth-rules change (like in windows).

It might be slow in each case, and very slow in case of ditributed system where folder might be on other server.

Solution

On each authenticated request you get a Resource Token, that confirms that you have access to it. You can use it for request subresources: when server gets resource token it checks about auth inheritance rules and if requested resource inherits auth rules from resource token`s resource - success. For example, if you are Jack and have owner rights on the malt, you can request access to the rat with malt's resource token.

How to use it

import { AuthManager } from "@hia/core";

const authManager = new AuthManager(withdrawStore, ruleStore);
// issue new token for resourceA. No auth check is made here
const tokenA = await authManager.issuer.Issue(resourceA, accessMode);
// auth access for resourceB with resourceA`s token (if resourceB inherits resourceA,it will be success)
const tokenB = await authManager.authenticator.Authenticate(resourceB, tokenA);

You need to implement some stores:

• IRuleStore: it stores AccessInheritanceRules for each resource
• IWithdrawStore: it stores withdrawed resources

/ Or you can use InMemory-implementations in dev /