GSIP 120

GSIP 120 - REST API for access control

Overview

Proposed By

Christian Mueller

Assigned to Release

GeoServer 2.7.0

State

• Under Discussion
• In Progress
• Completed
• Rejected
• Deferred

Motivation

Give a possibility to configure access control using a REST API.

Proposal overview

GeoServer uses three Java property files to store access control rules.

• layers.properties for access control rules for layers
• services.properties for access control rules for services
• rest.properties for access control rules for REST requests

Those three files are managed by the admin GUI. This proposal is about adding a REST API for reading,adding,modifying and deleting access control rules.

Detailed presentation of changes

URIs

• /security/acl/layers
• /security/acl/services
• /security/acl/rest

Supported formats

• XML
• JSON

The XML format contains of a set of "rule" elements. Each rule element has an attribute "resource" describing the resource to protect. The value of the "rule" element is a comma delimited list of role names or the asterisk. The standard layer.properties encoded in XML looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rules>
 <rule resource="*.*.r">*</rule>
 <rule resource="*.*.w">*</rule>
</rules>

The same example in JSON:

{
"*.*.r": "*",
"*.*.w": "*"
}

Reading

The rules can be read using the HTTP GET method. All rules are returned, no filter technique is applied. Return codes:

• 200 if the request is ok
• 403 if the user has no administrative privileges.

Adding a set of rules

Rules can be added by using the HTTP POST method. Return codes:

• 200 if all rules can be added
• 500 for an internal server error (e.g malformed syntax in the request body)
• 403 if the user has no administrative privileges.
• 409 (conflict) if only one rule already exists, the whole transaction is aborted

Modifying a set of rules

Rules can be modified by using the HTTP PUT method. The request body contains the modified rules. Return codes:

• 200 if all rules can be modified
• 500 for an internal server error (e.g malformed syntax in the request body)
• 403 if the user has no administrative privileges.
• 409 (conflict) if only one rule does not exist, the whole transaction is aborted

Deleting a specific rule

A rule can be deleted by using the HTTP DELETE method. The rule itself is the last part of the URI.

Example: /security/acl/layers/*.*.w

Return codes:

• 200 if the rule was deleted
• 500 for an internal server error
• 403 if the user has no administrative privileges.
• 404 If a rule does not exist.

Slashes ("/") in a rule name must be encoded with %2F.

Example for the REST rule "/**;GET"

/security/acl/rest/%2F**;GET

Feedback

Backwards Compatibility

Voting

Project Steering Committee:

• Alessio Fabiani
• Andrea Aime
• Ben Caradoc-Davies
• Christian Mueller
• Gabriel Roldán
• Jody Garnett
• Jukka Rahkonen
• Justin Deoliveira
• Phil Scadden
• Simone Giannecchini

Committers:

Links