This tiny library helps you to check if a user has access to somethin (e.g. a resource) in your node app. I created this lib to make my life a bit easier, when working with user and rights.
Probably this is not useful for anybody else, but who knows?
If you have an application with users they probably have different access levels oder rights. I prefer a hierarchic user-level approach. Every user-right is a string with 0..n 'dots'. Every dot in the string represents a hierarchy level. The more dots, the lower is the right in the hierarchy (similiar to how domain and subdomains and sub-subdomains [...] work).
A user is granted access to a resource if one of these conditions is true:
- the user has exactly the correct access right (required right is equal to provided right)
- the user has a right that is higher in the hierarchy than the required right
Let's look at an example:
userA has the following rights: ['some', 'foo.bar']
userB has the following rights: ['other', 'foo.bar.wat']
Assume we have the following resources:
resourceA which requires: ['some']
resourceB which requires: ['foo.bar.wat']
resourceC which requires: ['foo']
Who can access what?
userA can access resourceA and resourceB, but not resourceC
userA has access to resourceA, because she has the exactly matching right (some) that is required to access the resource.
She can access resourceB, because she has a right that is higher in the hierarchy than the right that is required to access the resource (has: foo.bar, required: foo.bar.wat)
userA cannot access resourceC, because she only has a right that is lower in the hierarchy than the right the resource requires.
userB can only access resourceB (because the required right foo.bar.wat matches exactly one of the provided rights)
There are some basic unit tests. Run them with npm:
npm install
npm test