A minimal library for access control. It is designed to be used together with opaque access tokens by providing a simple interface to define roles with different access permissions and verifying requests to resources.
- Fully typed
- Zero dependencies
- Serializable to store in a database
Install
npm i @almutwakel/access
Usage
import { AccessControl, Role } from "@almutwakel/access";
/**
* Define all your resources and their access patterns
*
* key => resource
* value => array of access types
*/
type Statements = {
user: ["read", "write", "dance"];
team: ["read", "write"];
};
/**
* Create an access control instance and pass the Statements type to enjoy full
* type safety
*/
const ac = new AccessControl<Statements>();
/**
* Now you can define one or more roles by specifying the access permissions
*
* This is already fully typed and typescript will let you know if you try to
* use anything, that is not defined in the Statements type.
*/
const role = ac.newRole({
user: ["read", "write"],
team: ["read"],
});
/**
* Simulate storing and retrieving the role in a database
*
* The idea here is, that you can store permissions alongside an API token.
* Now, when you verify the token, you can also verify the access permissions.
*/
const serialized = role.toString();
/**
* Note how you can pass in the Statements type again, to get full type safety
*/
const recovered = Role.fromString<Statements>(serialized);
/**
* Validate the role by specifying the resource and the required access
*
* everything is fully typed
*/
const res = recovered.authorize({"team", ["read"]});
// res.success => boolean
// res.error => string | undefined provides a reason for failure