Access Manager v2 API for PubNub JavaScript SDK

Access Manager allows you to enforce secure controls for client access to resources within the PubNub network. With Access Manager, your servers can grant their clients access to individual PubNub resources for a limited duration, with the ability to extend access or add permissions for additional resources.

As soon as Access Manager is enabled, no publish/subscribe operations can be done without first explicitly providing an authorization token to the PubNub object. If an invalid token is provided, the requesting client will receive a Forbidden error.

For more information about Access Manager, refer to Managing Permissions with Access Manager.

Supported and recommended asynchronous patterns

PubNub supports Callbacks, Promises, and Async/Await for asynchronous JS operations. The recommended pattern is Async/Await and all sample requests in this document are based on it. This pattern returns a status only on detecting an error. To receive the error status, you must add the try...catch syntax to your code.

Grant

Requires Access Manager add-on

This method requires that the Access Manager add-on is enabled for your key in the Admin Portal. Read the support page on enabling add-on features on your keys.

The grant method allows you to grant permissions for one or more resources to one or more authKeys. You may need to make multiple grant calls with an authKey so that you can specify explicit permissions for each channel, channelGroup and uuid resources. For common permissions, you can normally use a single request.

Privileges specifically granted to an application's subscribeKey always take precedence over privileges granted to channel or auth Key. Therefore an application that requires authentication at the user level should not grant access at either the Application or Channel levels. View the Grant Levels section for more details.

Permissions

The grant request allows your server to securely grant access for your clients on the following resources within the platform. Each resource allows a limited set of permissions that control the operations that can be performed by the clients. For permissions and API operations mapping information, refer to Managing Permissions with Access Manager.

Resource	Permissions
`channel`	`read`, `write`, `get`, `manage`, `update`, `join`, `delete`
`uuid`	`get`, `update`, `delete`
`channelGroup`	`read`, `manage`

Wildcard Permissions

Wildcard notation allows you to grant permissions to multiple channels at a time and later revoke these permissions in the same manner. You can go one level deep using wildcards. In other words:

a.* grants access on all channels that begin with a..
* or a.b.* won't work this way. If you grant on * or a.b.*, the grant treats * or a.b.* as a channel name, not a wildcard.

Wildcard revokes

You can revoke permissions with wildcards from one level deep, like a.*, only when you initially used wildcards to grant permissions to a.*.

Grant Levels

When a user attempts to access a PubNub resource, Access Manager will evaluate any existing rules using the following order of precedence before access to a channel is granted to the user:

Application Level - Access Manager privileges are always evaluated first at the Application level. If either read or write attribute is set to true for a subscribeKey, Access Manager will immediately grant access for that attribute without proceeding to check permissions at either Channel or User levels. If an attribute is set to false at the Application level, Access Manager proceeds to evaluate the attribute at the next most granular level.
Channel Level - After first verifying an attribute at the Application level, Access Manager evaluates the attribute at the Channel level. If an attribute is set to true for a combination of subscribeKey, and channel, Access Manager grants access for that attribute at the Channel level without proceeding to check whether there may be user level permissions.
User Level (Recommended) - As a final step Access Manager evaluates the attributes at the User level. If an attribute is set to true for subscribeKey, channel and auth Key, access is granted for that attribute. Similarly, user level grants also allow you granting an auth Key access to channelGroups and uuids. User level grants require authKeys and are the recommended approach if you need to manage permissions for individual users within your application. Each user should be assigned a unique auth Key and securely passed back to the user to perform operations on the platform.

Method(s)

To Grant Permissions on a Channel, you can use the following method(s) in the JavaScript SDK

grant({Array channels, Array channelGroups, Array uuids, Array authKeys, Number ttl, Boolean read, Boolean write, Boolean manage, Boolean delete, Boolean get, Boolean update, Boolean join})

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
`authKeys`	Array	Optional		Specifies `authKey` to grant permissions. It is possible to specify multiple `auth` keys as comma separated list in combination with a single `channel` name. `authKeys` are required for user-level grants. If you don't specify an `authKey`, the permissions will apply to all clients on channel-level or application-level. View the Grant Levels section for more details.
`channels`	Array	Specifying either `channels`, `channelGroups`, or `uuids` is mandatory.		Specifies up to 200 channels on which to grant permissions. Either `channels`, `channelGroups`, or `uuids` are required. This parameter supports wildcards that are one level deep (`a.*`).
`channelGroups`	Array	Specifying either `channels`, `channelGroups`, or `uuids` is mandatory.		Specifies up to 200 channel groups on which to grant permissions. Either `channels`, `channelGroups`, or `uuids` are required. This parameter does not support wildcards.
`uuids`	Array	Optional		Specifies up to 200 uuids on which to grant permissions. Either `channels`, `channelGroups`, or `uuids` are required. You can't grant permissions to channels and channel groups in the same request if you decide to use `uuids`. This parameter does not support wildcards.
`ttl`	Number	Yes	`1440 (24hrs)`	Time in minutes for which granted permissions are valid. Default is `1440 (24hrs)`, Max is `525600` , Min is `1`. Setting `ttl` to `0` will apply the grant indefinitely.
`read`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `read` permissions. Set to `false` to remove permissions.
`write`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `write` permissions. Set to `false` to remove permissions.
`manage`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `manage` permissions. Set to `false` to remove permissions.
`delete`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `delete` permissions. Set to `false` to remove permissions.
`get`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `get` permissions. Set to `false` to remove permissions.
`update`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `update` permissions. Set to `false` to remove permissions.
`join`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `join` permissions. Set to `false` to remove permissions.

Basic Usage

Grant Access Manager Permissions for channel and auth Key

try {
    const result = await pubnub.grant({
        authKeys: ["my_authkey"],
        channels: ["my_channel"],
        ttl: 12313, // 0 for infinite
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true, // false to disallow
        manage: true, // false to disallow
        delete: true, // false to disallow
    });
} catch (status) {
    console.log(status);
}

Response

{
    "status" : 200,
    "message" : "Success",
    "payload" : {
        "ttl" : 1440,
        "auths" : {
            "my_authkey" : {
                "r" : 1,
                "w" : 1,
                "m" : 1,
                "d" : 1,
                "g" : 0,
                "u" : 0,
                "j" : 0
            }
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Size of revoke requests

Access Manager grant or revoke requests must be less than ~32KiB at a time, or the client will return an error. For requests greater than 32KiB, break them into smaller batched requests. When the message size exceeds 32KiB the server returns the HTTP Error code 500, instead of the correct error code 414.

NTP configuration

For NTP synchronization, please ensure that you have configured NTP on your server to keep the clock in sync. This is to prevent system clock drift leading to 400 Invalid Timestamp error response. Read the support article for more details.

Other Examples

Grant access to a channel on an authKey

Grant read permission to a channel only for clients with a specific authKey with a 5 minute ttl:

try {
    const result = await pubnub.grant({
        authKeys: ["my_authkey"],
        channels: ["my_channel"],
        ttl: 5,
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: false, // false to disallow
    });
} catch (status) {
    console.log(status);
}

Grant access to presence channel on an authKey

Grant read and write permissions to an authKey on a presence channel with a 5 minute ttl:

try {
    const result = await pubnub.grant({
        authKeys: ["my_authkey"],
        channels: ["my_channel-pnpres"],
        ttl: 5,
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true, // false to disallow
    });
} catch (status) {
    console.log(status);
}

Grant access to a UUID on an authKey

Grant get, update, and delete access to a uuid only for clients with a specific authKey with a 24 hour ttl:

try {
    const result = await pubnub.grant({
        authKeys: ["key1"],
        uuids: ["uuid1"],
        ttl: 1440, // 0 for infinite
        get: true, // false to disallow
        update: true, // false to disallow
        delete: true, // false to disallow
    });
} catch (status) {
    console.log(status);
}

Grant access to all channels on all authKeys

This request grants read permission to all users on all channel(s) with default ttl (1440 minutes). This rule applies on the application level and takes precedence over channel and user-level permissions.

Use application level grants with caution

When access is granted on an application level, all channels and users will have access.

Application level grants can also happen due to a bug in your code. For example, Null parameters for channels and auth-keys can cause accidental application level grants.

const result = await pubnub.grant({
    read: true,
});

Grant access to a channel on all authKeys

This request grants read and write permissions to a specific channel for all users (no authKey required) with default ttl (1440 minutes). This rule applies on the channel level and takes precedence over user-level permissions.

try {
    const result = await pubnub.grant({
        channels: ["my_channel"],
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true, // false to disallow
    });
} catch (status) {
    console.log(status);
}

Supported and recommended asynchronous patterns

Grant​

Requires Access Manager add-on

Permissions​

Wildcard Permissions​

Wildcard revokes

Grant Levels​

Method(s)​

Basic Usage​

Grant Access Manager Permissions for channel and auth Key​

Response​