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.

Install via bower

bower install angular-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 $routeProvider
  $routeProvider
    .state('staffpanel', {
      url: '...',
      permissions: {
        only: ['admin', 'moderator']
      }
    });

You can either set an only or an except array.

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

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

  $routeProvider
    .state('dashboard', {
      url: '...',
      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 () {
        // 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 () {
          // 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 () {
          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;
        });
    });

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.

TODOS:

• Passing state parameters on redirect and/or broadcasting events to allow better control and customization

Contribute

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

Author

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