auth_scopes

Granular Authorization with OAuth 2.0 Scopes
In many applications, operations have varying levels of access control. For example, a user may need special permission to create 'notes', but every user can read notes. In OAuth 2.0, permissions for operations are determined by an access token's scope. Operations can be defined to require certain scopes, and a request may only invoke those operations if its access token was granted with those scopes.
A scope is a string identifier, like notes or notes.readonly. When a client application authenticates on behalf of a user, it requests one or more of these scope identifiers to be granted to the access token. Valid scopes will be stored with the access token, so that the scope can be referenced by subsequent uses of the access token.
Scope Usage in Conduit
An access token's scope is determined when a user authenticates. During authentication, a client application indicates the requested scope, and the Conduit application determines if that scope is permissible for the client application and the user. This scope information is attached to the access token.
When a request is made with an access token, an Authorizer retrieves the token's scope. After the request is validated, the Authorizer stores scope information in Request.authorization. Linked controllers can use this information to determine how the request is handled. In general, a controller will reject a request and send a 403 Forbidden response when an access token has insufficient scope for an operation.
Therefore, adding scopes to an application consists of three steps:
1.Adding scope restrictions to operations.
2.Adding permissible scopes for OAuth2 client identifiers (and optionally users).
3.Updating client applications to request scope when authenticating.
Adding Scope Restrictions to Operations
When an Authorizer handles a request, it creates an Authorization object that is attached to the request. An Authorization object has a scopes property that contains every scope granted for the access token. This object also has a convenience method for checking if a particular scope is valid for that list of scopes:
1
class NoteController extends Controller {
2
  @override
3
  Future<RequestOrResponse> handle(Request request) async {
4
    if (!request.authorization.isAuthorizedForScope("notes")) {
5
      return Response.forbidden();
6
    }
7
​
8
    return Response.ok(await getAllNotes());
9
  }
10
}
Copied!
!!! warning "Use an Authorizer" The authorization property of Request is only valid after the request is handled by an Authorizer. It is null otherwise.
An Authorizer may also validate the scope of a request before letting it pass to its linked controller.
1
router
2
  .route('/notes')
3
  .link(() => Authorizer.bearer(authServer, scopes: ['notes']))
4
  .link(() => NoteController());
Copied!
In the above, the NoteController will only be reached if the request's bearer token has 'notes' scope. If there is insufficient scope, a 403 Forbidden response is sent. This applies to all operations of the NoteController.
It often makes sense to have separate scope for different operations on the same resource. The Scope annotation may be added to ResourceController operation methods for this purpose.
1
class NoteController extends ResourceController {
2
  @Scope(['notes.readonly'])
3
  @Operation.get()
4
  Future<Response> getNotes() async => ...;
5
​
6
  @Scope(['notes'])
7
  @Operation.post()
8
  Future<Response> createNote(@Bind.body() Note note) async => ...;
9
}
Copied!
If a request does not have sufficient scope for the intended operation method, a 403 Forbidden response is sent. When using Scope annotations, you must link an Authorizer prior to the ResourceController, but it is not necessary to specify Authorizer scopes.
If a Scope annotation or Authorizer contains multiple scope entries, an access token must have scope for each of those entries. For example, the annotation @Scope(['notes', 'user']) requires an access token to have both 'notes' and 'user' scope.
Defining Permissible Scope
When a client application authenticates on behalf of a user, it includes a list of request scopes for the access token. A Conduit application will grant the requested scopes to the token if the scopes are permissible for both the authenticating client identifier and the authenticating user.
To add permissible scopes to an authenticating client, you use the conduit auth command-line tool. When creating a new client identifier, include the --allowed-scopes options:
1
conduit auth add-client \
2
  --id com.app.mobile \
3
  --secret myspecialsecret \
4
  --allowed-scopes 'notes users' \
5
  --connect postgres://user:[email protected]:5432/db_name
Copied!
When modifying an existing client identifier, use the command conduit auth set-scope:
1
conduit auth set-scope \
2
  --id com.app.mobile \
3
  --scopes 'notes users' \
4
  --connect postgres://user:[email protected]:5432/db_name
Copied!
Each scope is a space-delimited string; the above examples allow clients authenticating with the com.app.mobile client ID to grant access tokens with 'notes' and 'users' scope. If a client application requests scopes that are not available for that client application, the granted access token will not contain that scope. If none of the request scopes are available for the client identifier, no access token is granted. When adding scope restrictions to your application, you must ensure that all of the client applications that have access to those operations are able to grant that scope.
Scopes may also be limited by some attribute of your application's concept of a 'user'. This user-level filtering is done by overriding getAllowedScopes in AuthServerDelegate. By default, this method returns AuthScope.Any - which means there are no restrictions. If the client application allows the scope, then any user that logs in with that application can request that scope.
This method may return a list of AuthScopes that are valid for the authenticating user. The following example shows a ManagedAuthDelegate<T> subclass that allows any scope for @conduit.dart.com usernames, no scopes for @hotmail.com addresses and some limited scope for everyone else:
1
class DomainBasedAuthDelegate extends ManagedAuthDelegate<User> {
2
  DomainBasedAuthDelegate(ManagedContext context, {int tokenLimit: 40}) :
3
        super(context, tokenLimit: tokenLimit);
4
​
5
  @override
6
  List<AuthScope> getAllowedScopes(covariant User user) {
7
    if (user.username.endsWith("@conduit.dart.com")) {
8
      return AuthScope.Any;
9
    } else if (user.username.endsWith("@hotmail.com")) {
10
      return [];
11
    } else {
12
      return [AuthScope("user")];
13
    }
14
  }      
15
}
Copied!
The user passed to getAllowedScopes is the user being authenticated. It will have previously been fetched by the AuthServer. The AuthServer fetches this object by invoking AuthDelegate.getResourceOwner. The default implementation of this method for ManagedAuthDelegate<T> only fetches the id, username, salt and hashedPassword of the user.
When using some other attribute of an application's user object to restrict allowed scopes, you must also override getResourceOwner to fetch these attributes. For example, if your application's user has a role attribute, you must fetch it and the other four required properties. Here's an example implementation:
1
class RoleBasedAuthDelegate extends ManagedAuthDelegate<User> {
2
  RoleBasedAuthDelegate(ManagedContext context, {int tokenLimit: 40}) :
3
        super(context, tokenLimit: tokenLimit);
4
​
5
  @override
6
  Future<User> getResourceOwner(
7
      AuthServer server, String username) {
8
    final query = Query<User>(context)
9
      ..where((u) => u.username).equalTo(username)
10
      ..returningProperties((t) =>
11
        [t.id, t.username, t.hashedPassword, t.salt, t.role]);
12
​
13
    return query.fetchOne();
14
  }
15
​
16
  @override
17
  List<AuthScope> getAllowedScopes(covariant User user) {
18
    var scopeStrings = [];
19
    if (user.role == "admin") {
20
      scopeStrings = ["admin", "user"];
21
    } else if (user.role == "user") {
22
      scopeStrings = ["user:email"];
23
    }
24
​
25
    return scopeStrings.map((str) => AuthScope(str)).toList();
26
  }
27
}
Copied!
Client Application Integration
Client applications that integrate with your scoped Conduit application must include a list of requested scopes when performing authentication. When authenticating through AuthController, a scope parameter must be added to the form data body. This parameter's value must be a space-delimited, URL-encoded list of requested scopes.
1
username=bob&password=foo&grant_type=password&scope=notes%20users
Copied!
When authenticating via an AuthCodeController, this same query parameter is added to the initial GET request to render the login form.
When authentication is complete, the list of granted scopes will be available in the JSON response body as a space-delimited string.
1
{
2
  "access_token": "...",
3
  "refresh_token": "...",
4
  "token_type": "bearer",
5
  "expires_in": 3600,
6
  "scopes": "notes users"
7
}
Copied!
Scope Format and Hierarchy
There is no definitive guide on what a scope string should look like, other than being restricted to alphanumeric characters and some symbols. Conduit, however, provides a simple scoping structure - there are two special symbols, : and ..
Hierarchy is specified by the : character. For example, the following is a hierarchy of scopes related to a user and its sub-resources:
user (can read/write everything a user has)
user:email (can read/write a user's email)
user:documents (can read/write a user's documents)
user:documents:spreadsheets (can read/write a user's spreadsheet documents)
Notice how these scopes form a hierarchy. Each segment makes the scope more restrictive. For example, if an access token has user:email scope, it only allows access to a user's email. However, if the access token has user scope, it allows access to everything a user has, including their email.
As another example, an access token with user:documents scope can access all of a user's documents, but the scope user:documents:spreadsheets is limited to only spreadsheet documents.
Scope is often used to indicate read vs. write access. At first glance, it might sound like a good idea to use the hierarchy operator, e.g. user:email:read and user:email:write. However, an access token with user:email:write does not have permission to read email and this is likely unintended.
This is where scope modifiers come in. A scope modifier is added after a . at the end of a scope string. For example, user:email.readonly grants readonly access to a user's email whereas user:email grants read and write access.
An access token without a modifier has permission any modifier. Thus, user and user:email can both access user:email.readonly protected resources and actions, but user:email.readonly cannot access resources protected by user:email.
A scope modifier is only valid for the last segment of a scope string. That is, user:documents.readonly:spreadsheets is not valid, but user:documents:spreadsheets.readonly is.
Issue Access Tokens with AuthController
Securing Routes with Authorizer
Last modified 2mo ago
Copy link
Contents
Granular Authorization with OAuth 2.0 Scopes
Scope Usage in Conduit
Adding Scope Restrictions to Operations
Defining Permissible Scope
Client Application Integration
Scope Format and Hierarchy