Authorizations can be applied in these places:
::Types::BaseObject
)::Types::BaseEnum
)::Types::BaseResolver
)::Types::BaseMutation
)field
DSL method)Authorizations cannot be specified for abstract types (interfaces and unions). Abstract types delegate to their member types. Basic built in scalars (such as integers) do not have authorizations.
Our authorization system uses the same DeclarativePolicy
system as throughout the rest of the application.
Query.project
), if the currently authenticated user fails the authorization, the field resolves to null
.Project.issues
), the collection is filtered to exclude the objects that the user’s authorization checks failed against. This process of filtering (also known as redaction) happens after pagination, so some pages may be smaller than the requested page size, due to redacted objects being removed.Also see authorizing resources in a mutation.
The best practice is to load only what the currently authenticated user is allowed to view with our existing finders first, without relying on authorization to filter the records. This minimizes database queries and unnecessary authorization checks of the loaded records. It also avoids situations, such as short pages, which can expose the presence of confidential resources.
See authorization_spec.rb
for examples of all the authorization schemes discussed here.
Authorize a type by passing an ability to the authorize
method. All fields with the same type is authorized by checking that the currently authenticated user has the required ability.
For example, the following authorization ensures that the currently authenticated user can only see projects that they have the read_project
ability for (so long as the project is returned in a field that uses Types::ProjectType
):
module Types
class ProjectType < BaseObject
authorize :read_project
end
end
You can also authorize against multiple abilities, in which case all of the ability checks must pass.
For example, the following authorization ensures that the currently authenticated user must have read_project
and another_ability
abilities to see a project:
module Types
class ProjectType < BaseObject
authorize [:read_project, :another_ability]
end
end
Resolver authorization
Resolvers can have their own authorizations, which can be applied either to the parent object or to the resolved values.
An example of a resolver that authorizes against the parent is Resolvers::BoardListsResolver
, which requires that the parent satisfy :read_list
before it runs.
An example which authorizes against the resolved resource is Resolvers::Ci::ConfigResolver
, which requires that the resolved value satisfy :read_pipeline
.
To authorize against the parent, the resolver must opt in (because this was not the default value initially), by declaring this with authorizes_object!
:
module Resolvers
class MyResolver < BaseResolver
authorizes_object!
authorize :some_permission
end
end
To authorize against the resolved value, the resolver must apply the authorization at some point, typically by using #authorized_find!(**args)
:
module Resolvers
class MyResolver < BaseResolver
authorize :some_permission
def resolve(**args)
authorized_find!(**args) # calls find_object
end
def find_object(id:)
MyThing.find(id)
end
end
end
Of the two approaches, authorizing the object is more efficient, because it helps avoid unnecessary queries.
Field authorizationFields can be authorized with the authorize
option.
Fields authorization is checked against the current object, and authorization happens before resolution, which means that fields do not have access to the resolved resource. If you need to apply an authorization check to a field, you probably want to add authorization to the resolver, or ideally to the type.
For example, the following authorization ensures that the authenticated user must have administrator level access to the project to view the secretName
field:
module Types
class ProjectType < BaseObject
field :secret_name, ::GraphQL::Types::String, null: true, authorize: :owner_access
end
end
In this example, we use field authorization (such as Ability.allowed?(current_user, :read_transactions, bank_account)
) to avoid a more expensive query:
module Types
class BankAccountType < BaseObject
field :transactions, ::Types::TransactionType.connection_type, null: true,
authorize: :read_transactions
end
end
Field authorization is recommended for:
Field authorization does not replace object level checks, unless the object precisely matches the access level of the parent project. For example, issues can be confidential, independent of the access level of the parent. Therefore, we should not use field authorization for Project.issue
.
You can also authorize fields against multiple abilities. Pass the abilities as an array instead of as a single value:
module Types
class MyType < BaseObject
field :hidden_field, ::GraphQL::Types::Int,
null: true,
authorize: [:owner_access, :another_ability]
end
end
The field authorization on MyType.hiddenField
implies the following tests:
Ability.allowed?(current_user, :owner_access, object_of_my_type) &&
Ability.allowed?(current_user, :another_ability, object_of_my_type)
Type and Field authorizations together
Authorizations are cumulative. In other words, the currently authenticated user may need to pass authorization requirements on both a field and a field’s type.
In the following simplified example the currently authenticated user needs both first_permission
on the user and second_permission
on the issue to see the author of the issue.
class UserType
authorize :first_permission
end
class IssueType
field :author, UserType, authorize: :second_permission
end
The combination of the object authorization on UserType
and the field authorization on IssueType.author
implies the following tests:
Ability.allowed?(current_user, :second_permission, issue) &&
Ability.allowed?(current_user, :first_permission, issue.author)
Skip Type authorization for a given field
In some scenarios, a given field is resolved with a dedicated resolver
and the resolver takes care of checking the resolved objects’ authorization.
In such cases, especially when the field resolves a collection of objects, we’d like to skip the Type
level authorization. Depending on the GraphQL query, having these overlapping authorization checks, can add significant overhead.
For such situations, we can specify which abilities should be skipped at Type
level by specifying the list of abilities through skip_type_authorization
on a given field. This option cascades down to all descendant fields as well.
For a real-world example, see field :discussions, Types::Notes::DiscussionType.
In that example, we have DiscussionType
which specifies authorize :read_note
. Discussion
is composed of multiple notes
of type NoteType
and NoteType
also specifies authorize: :read_note
. Some of these notes
may be system notes and may have some specific metadata of type SystemNoteMetadataType
. SystemNoteMetadataType
also specifies the authorize: :read_note
. Each note can have emojis, which are authorized with read_emoji
, which is equivalent to read_note
in this case.
To represent this in a GraphQL example, we’d have following types:
class SomeType < BaseObject
field :discussions, Types::Notes::DiscussionType.connection_type, null: true, resolver: SomeResolver
end
class DiscussionType < BaseObject
authorize :read_note
field :notes, Types::Notes::NoteType.connection_type, null: true
end
class NoteType < BaseObject
authorize :read_note
field :system_note_metadata, SystemNoteMetadataType
field :award_emoji, AwardEmojiType
end
class SystemNoteMetadataType < BaseObject
authorize :read_note
end
class AwardEmojiType < BaseObject
authorize :read_emoji
end
And a query like:
query {
someType(identified: ID) {
discussions {
nodes {
notes {
nodes {
award_emoji {
name
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
For example, if the root object of type SomeType
has 10 discussions. Each of the 10 discussions have 10 notes. And the first note of each discussion has one emoji.
In this case, we authorize the discussions in SomeResolver
, that is 10 authorization calls. Then when we represent each discussion with DiscussionType
, we authorize each discussion object, again 10 calls. These specific calls may be fine, as these would have been cached in the request store during resolver authorization because we are authorizing the same objects. Next, we authorize each note for these 10 discussions, resulting in 10*10 = 100 authorization calls. And lastly for the first note in each discussion, we would authorize one emoji, that is another 10 calls. So in total we have 130 authorization calls:
DiscussionType
NoteType
EmojiType
We can reduce these 130 calls to just 10 calls by specifying the skip_type_authorization
on the discussions
field. For that, SomeType
definition changes to:
class SomeType < BaseObject
field :discussions, Types::Notes::DiscussionType.connection_type, null: true, resolver: SomeResolver,
skip_type_authorization: [:read_note, :read_emoji]
end
We can optimize the authorization calls with skip_type_authorization
in this case, because:
SomeResolver
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4