REST-bac

A REST based access control list middleware for Express applications.

This middleware allows to protect each method (GET,POST...) of any Express path (all the Express-style paths) with a set of custom roles specified in a configuration JSON.

Install

In your project root type npm install rest-bac --save

Usage

To use the middleware you need an express application and a rest-bac configuration JSON. The express application should already provide a middleware or some other logic that set the req.user.roles property with an array of roles (string).

NB: the module protect exclusively the paths specified in the REST-BAC configuration JSON. If a business logic route path doesn't have a catching rest-bac path rule you have an Unhautorized 401 response.

JSON Configuration

The following configuration allow a "user" role to do GET requests to /book and all the paths under /book/* that don't match the path /book/admin/. An "admin" role can do POST and GET requests to /book and all its descendant paths /book/

{
  "/book(/*)?": {
    "get": ["user", "admin"],
    "post": ["admin"]
  },
 
  "/book/admin/*": {
    "action": "deny",
    "get": ["user"]
  },
 
  "/author(/*)?": {
      "get": ["user","admin"]
  }
}

Initialization

To initialize the rest role based access control simply use

var restbac = require('rest-bac');
 
// some code to initialize the express app and the rest-bac configurations
 
// app is the expressjs application
// rbac-config is the JSON (parsed) object for the configuration
// prefix-path is an optional string to be prefixed to all the paths specified in the rbac-config
restbac(app, rbac-config, prefix-path)
 

Full Example

This is a full example to better understand how to use the middleware.

Server Application Code

This code can be found at /test/server.js. You can run and test it directly with node test/server.js.

"use strict";
 
var express = require('express');
var restbac = require('rest-bac');
 
// some code to initialize the express app and the rest-bac configurations
var app = express();
 
// before use rest-bac the express app need to extract some roles from the request
// and put them in the req.user.roles array
app.use(function (req, res, next) {
    req.user = {};
    var auth = req.get('Authorization');
    if (typeof auth != "undefined")
        req.user.roles = auth.split(" ");
    else
        req.user.roles = [];
    next();
});
 
var config = {
    "/book(/*)?": {
        get: ["user", "admin"],
        post: ["admin"]
    },
    "/book/admin/*": {
        action: "deny",
        get: ["user"]
    }
};
 
// setup the rest methods protection --> paths in config are prefixed with "/api/v1"
restbac(app, config, "/api/v1");
 
// now we can define some business logic API routes
app.get("/api/v1/book/:id", function (req, res, next) {
    // user and admin roles can reach this function
    res.send(req.params.id);
});
app.post("/api/v1/book", function (req, res, next) {
    // only the admin can reach this function
    res.send("POST OK");
 
});
app.get("/api/v1/book/admin/some", function (req, res, next) {
    // only the admin can reach this function
    res.send("admin path");
});
 
 
// a simple error handler to catch authorization error
app.use(function (err, req, res, next) {
 
    // rest-bac authorization error propagate an Error object with a 401 status code
 
    res.status(err.status || 500);
    res.json({
        message: err.message
    });
 
});
 
var server = app.listen(3000, function () {
  var host = server.address().address;
  var port = server.address().port;
  console.log('Example app listening at http://%s:%s', host, port);
});

Some requests

Valid request for a user role

GET /api/v1/book/123 HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:3000
Authorization: user


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 3

123

Invalid role cause a 401 with a json error message

GET /api/v1/book/123 HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:3000
Authorization: invalid


HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 63

{"message":"Unhautorized: Invalid role or path not configured"}

The user cannot request a path under /api/v1/book/admin/*

GET /api/v1/book/admin/some HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:3000
Authorization: user

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 63

{"message":"Unhautorized: Invalid role or path not configured"}

GET /api/v1/book/admin/some HTTP/1.1
Host: 127.0.0.1:3000
Authorization: admin


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 10

admin path