Access Manager API for PubNub Vue SDK

Access Manager v2

This is the outdated Access Manager v2 API. For details about the latest version, see Access Manager v3.

Access Manager extends PubNub's existing security framework by allowing developers to create and enforce secure access to channels and channel groups throughout the PubNub Real-Time Network.

As soon as Access Manager is enabled, no pub/sub-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.

Learn more about Access Manager here.

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.

Description

This function establishes access permissions for Access Manager by setting the read or write attribute to true. A grant with read or write set to false (or not included) will revoke any previous grants with read or write set to true. Permissions can be applied to any one of three levels:

1. Application level privileges are based on subscribeKey applying to all associated channels.
2. Channel level privileges are based on a combination of subscribeKey and channel name.
3. User level privileges are based on the combination of subscribeKey, channel and auth Key.

Warning

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.

https://support.pubnub.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051973331-Why-do-I-get-Invalid-Timestamp-when-I-try-to-grant-permission-using-Access-Manager-

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 only 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 Rules

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:

1. 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.

   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.

2. 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.

3. User Level - 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.

Note

If an argument of the grant is not provided, an expected default will be assumed.

• read and write arguments default to false
• no auth Key results in channel-level grant
• no channel results in application-level grant

No Permissions - If no permissions were granted at any of the three levels, the user will be denied access to the PubNub resource and receive a 403 error message. This is the default behavior for a Access Manager enabled application.

Important

Note that 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 userlevel should not grant access at either the Application or Channel levels.

Related Behavior:

• History To access historical messages you must grant full read access at either the subscribeKey or channel level. When a user has the appropriate permissions they can access any data stored. If they do not have access a 403 will be returned by Access Manager.
• Presence To grant access to Presence for a particular channel name you must also allow read and write access to the presence channel name which is specified by adding the -pnpres suffix to the name. Also note that a leave will fail in the case where a user's grant expires while connected. An HTTP 403 will be returned.
• APNs Standard permissions are required for publishing.

Duration of Permissions

The duration of permission set with grant() are controlled by setting a time-to-live(ttl). If a ttl is not specified it is automatically set to 1440 minutes by default. Once the ttl associated with an entry in Access Manager has expired, the read and write attributes are immediately set to false for that entry in the Access Manager table.

Caution

Access Manager grant or revoke requests must be less than ~32KB at a time, or the client will return an error. For requests greater than 32KB, break them into smaller batched requests.

Warning

When the message size exceeds 32KB the server returns the HTTP Error code 500, instead of the correct error code 414.

Note

When you init with secretKey, you get root permissions for the Access Manager. With this feature you don't have to grant access to your servers to access channel data. The servers get all access on all channels.

Note

The limit on the total amount of channels that you can pass at once when using grant() is 200.

Method(s)

To Grant Permissions on a Channel you can use the following method(s) in the Vue 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},Function callback)

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 or channelGroups is mandatory.		Specifies the channels on which to grant permissions. If no channels/channelGroups are specified, then the grant applies to any and all channels/channelGroups that have been or will be created for that publish/subscribe key set. Furthermore, any existing or future grants on specific channels are ignored, until the all channels grant is revoked. It is possible to grant permissions to multiple channels simultaneously by specifying the channels as a comma separated list. Wildcard notation like a.* can be used to grant access on channels. You can grant one level deep. a.* - you can grant on this. * and a.b.* - grant will not work on these levels. If you grant on * or a.b.*, the grant will treat * or a.b.* as a single channel named either * or a.b.*.
channelGroups	Array	Specifying either channels or channelGroups is mandatory.		Specifies the channelGroups to grant permissions. If no channels/channelGroups are specified, then the grant applies to any and all channels/channelGroups that have been or will be created for that publish/subscribe key set. Furthermore, any existing or future grants on specific channelGroups are ignored, until the all channelGroups grant is revoked. It is possible to grant permissions to multiple channelGroups simultaneously by specifying the channelGroups as a comma separated list. This parameter does not support wildcards.
uuids	Array	Optional		A list of uuids to grant permissions to. 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. The default value is 1440 (24hrs) and the allowed values range from 1 to 525600. If you set ttl to 0, it will apply the grant indefinitely.
read	Boolean	Optional	false	Read permissions are granted by setting to true. Read permissions are removed by setting to false.
write	Boolean	Optional	false	Write permissions are granted by setting to true. Write permissions are removed by setting to false.
manage	Boolean	Optional	false	Manage permissions are granted by setting to true. Manage permissions are removed by setting to false.
delete	Boolean	Optional	false	Set to true to grant delete permissions. Set to false to remove delete permissions.
get	Boolean	Optional	false	Set to true to grant get permissions. Set to false to remove get permissions.
update	Boolean	Optional	false	Set to true to grant update permissions. Set to false to remove update permissions.
join	Boolean	Optional	false	Set to true to grant join permissions. Set to false to remove join permissions.
callback	Function	Optional		Executes on a successful/unsuccessful grant.

Basic Usage

Grant Access Manager Permissions for channel and auth Key

import PubNubVue from 'pubnub-vue';

const pubnub = PubNubVue.getInstance();

pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: [ch1, ch2],
        channelGroups: [cg1, cg2],
        authKeys: [key1, key2],
        ttl: 12313, // 0 for infinite
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true, // false to disallow
        manage: true// false to disallow
    },
    function(status) {

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Other Examples

Grant subscribe privileges to all users on all channel(s) with default ttl (1440 minutes)

import PubNubVue from 'pubnub-vue';

const pubnub = PubNubVue.getInstance();

// grant world read access to all channels

pubnub.grant({
read: true
});

Allow subscribe and publish to a specific channel for all users (no auth Key required) with default ttl (1440 minutes)

import PubNubVue from 'pubnub-vue';

const pubnub = PubNubVue.getInstance();

pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['my_channel'],
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true// false to disallow
    },
    function(status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

Grant subscribe access to a channel only for clients with a specific auth Key with a 5 minute ttl

import PubNubVue from 'pubnub-vue';

const pubnub = PubNubVue.getInstance();

pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['my_channel'],
        authKeys: ['my_ro_authkey'],
        ttl: 5, // 0 for infinite
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: false// false to disallow
    },
    function(status) {
        console.log(status);
    }

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The above code would return the following response to the client:

{
    error: false,
    operation: 'PNAccessManagerGrant',
    statusCode: 200
}

Allow access to a specific channel for Presence

import PubNubVue from 'pubnub-vue';

const pubnub = PubNubVue.getInstance();

pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['my_channel-pnpres'],
        ttl: 5, // 0 for infinite
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true// false to disallow
    },
    function(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.

pubnub.grant({
    read: true
});

Channel Level Grant

import PubNubVue from 'pubnub-vue';

const pubnub = PubNubVue.getInstance();

pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['ch1'],
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true// false to disallow
    },
    function(status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

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:

import PubNubVue from 'pubnub-vue';

const pubnub = PubNubVue.getInstance();

pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['ch1'],
        authKeys: ['key1'],
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true// false to disallow
    },
    function(status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

UUID Level Grant

pubnub.grant(
    {
        uuids: ['uuid1'],
        authKeys: ['key1'],
        ttl: 60, // 0 for infinite
        get: true, // false to disallow
        update: true, // false to disallow
        delete: true // false to disallow
    },
    function (status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);