Build Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC)

While role-based access control (RBAC) emphasizes granting permissions based on roles, you may also wish to grant permissions or roles based on attributes of actors or resources. With Oso, you can use attribute-based logic alongside roles.

Grant permissions with attributes

Granting users permissions based on attributes is simple with Oso. Let’s say your policy contains the following resource block:

# ...

resource Repository {
  permissions = ["read"];
  roles = ["contributor", "admin"];

  "read" if "contributor";
}

The block contains a role-based rule that grants the "read" permission to actors who have the "contributor" role.

You can add an attribute-based rule that grants all users the "read" permission for any repository that is public:

# ...

resource Repository {
  permissions = ["read"];
  roles = ["contributor", "admin"];

  "read" if "contributor";
}

has_permission(_: User, "read", repo: Repository) if repo.is_public;

The has_permission rule above tells Oso to look up the is_public attribute on the Repository application type in order to determine whether or not someone should be granted "read" access. This rule will be evaluated alongside the "read" if "contributor" shorthand rule in the resource block so that a user can read a repository if they have the "contributor" role OR if the repository is public.

Grant roles with attributes

Oso also supports granting users roles based on user or resource attributes. Oso uses has_role rules to look up a user’s roles in your application. By defining multiple has_role rules, you can customize how users are granted various roles.

For example, you could add a has_role rule to the policy above that grants the "admin" role to the repository creator:

# ...

resource Repository {
  permissions = ["read"];
  roles = ["contributor", "admin"];

  "read" if "contributor";
}

has_role(user: User, "admin", repo: Repository) if user = repo.created_by;

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If you have any questions, or just want to talk something through, jump into Slack. An Oso engineer or one of the thousands of developers in the growing community will be happy to help.