Content Permissions

Cole Arendt

8/9/2021

Source: vignettes/articles/content_permissions.Rmd

Getting Started

To filter content by permissions, you first need a “baseline set of content.” This could be all content on the server, all content in a particular tag, etc.

NOTE: performance will depend heavily on the size of this baseline set of content, because the permissions API today requires enumeration. To improve performance for large sets of content, you can use pins or caching on disk to reduce how often the requests must be re-executed.

We will start by deploying a few pieces of test content, two test users, set access controls, and tags:

bnd <- bundle_static(system.file("logo.png", package = "connectapi"))
## Bundling directory (/tmp/RtmplcQbhU/bundledir1f443818334e)
content_1 <- deploy(client, bnd, title = "App 1")
## Getting content endpoint
## Found EXISTING content 7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f with name mwlefoodfieexombwkkeulbfd on http://localhost:32768
## Uploading bundle
## Deploying bundle
content_2 <- deploy(client, bnd, title = "App 2")
## Getting content endpoint
## Found EXISTING content 744c9764-6294-4b53-b94d-2be51ebbf3b1 with name pbcyvkgufivjubqtxvafbsnay on http://localhost:32768
## Uploading bundle
## Deploying bundle
user_restricted <- client$users_create("example_restricted", "restricted@example.com", password = create_random_name())
user_all <- client$users_create("example_all", "all@example.com", password = create_random_name())

invisible(create_tag_tree(client, "Example", "Permissions"))
## Posit Connect Tag Tree (filtered)
## └── Example
##    └── Permissions
tags <- get_tags(client)
tag_1 <- tags$Example$Permissions

set_content_tags(content_1, tag_1)
## Posit Connect Tag Tree (content)
## └── Example
##    └── Permissions
## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f/
##   Task ID: z594CTEh4BY2JLCi
set_content_tags(content_2, tag_1)
## Posit Connect Tag Tree (content)
## └── Example
##    └── Permissions
## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 744c9764-6294-4b53-b94d-2be51ebbf3b1
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/744c9764-6294-4b53-b94d-2be51ebbf3b1/
##   Task ID: wYrmbRV2ZZhShCgV
content_add_user(content_1, user_restricted$guid, role = "viewer")
## Adding permission for user '92d1edfa-2977-4eae-a856-25440f10cd26' with role 'viewer'
## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f/
##   Task ID: z594CTEh4BY2JLCi
content_add_user(content_1, user_all$guid, "viewer")
## Adding permission for user 'f16282ae-f232-4a08-95cf-e93c4fdfc730' with role 'viewer'
## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f/
##   Task ID: z594CTEh4BY2JLCi
content_add_user(content_2, user_all$guid, "viewer")
## Adding permission for user 'f16282ae-f232-4a08-95cf-e93c4fdfc730' with role 'viewer'
## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 744c9764-6294-4b53-b94d-2be51ebbf3b1
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/744c9764-6294-4b53-b94d-2be51ebbf3b1/
##   Task ID: wYrmbRV2ZZhShCgV

Retrieve the Content List

The content_list_with_permissions() function is the core of what we want. However, it defaults to return all content on the server. For some servers, this is very expensive (and can take 30 minutes or more).

Instead, we recommend using the .p argument to define a “predicate” function (in the style of purrr::keep()) that determines which records to keep. Since all this predicate has access to is the “content list” itself, we will retrieve a list of Content GUIDs first.

my_tag_content <- content_list_by_tag(client, tag_1)
content_guids <- my_tag_content$guid

c_with_p <- content_list_with_permissions(client, .p = ~ .x$guid %in% content_guids)
## Getting content list
## Getting permission list
# another approach, with a function
# content_list_with_permissions(client, .p = function(.x) {.x$guid %in% content_guids})

# notice the "permission" column:
c_with_p$permission
## [[1]]
## # A tibble: 2 × 5
##   id    content_guid                         principal_guid principal_type role 
##   <chr> <chr>                                <chr>          <chr>          <chr>
## 1 3     744c9764-6294-4b53-b94d-2be51ebbf3b1 f16282ae-f232… user           view…
## 2 NA    744c9764-6294-4b53-b94d-2be51ebbf3b1 591d69cc-7fe0… user           owner
## 
## [[2]]
## # A tibble: 3 × 5
##   id    content_guid                         principal_guid principal_type role 
##   <chr> <chr>                                <chr>          <chr>          <chr>
## 1 1     7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f 92d1edfa-2977… user           view…
## 2 2     7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f f16282ae-f232… user           view…
## 3 NA    7689c03c-f61a-4145-a71b-1725f00f724f 591d69cc-7fe0… user           owner

Filter the Content List

We added a helper function to the package that should filter the content list for you: content_list_guid_has_access()

In a Shiny application or other personalized context (i.e. using session$user), you then filter the content list to only what a user should see (using the permissions column returned above)

# restricted has access
content_list_guid_has_access(c_with_p, user_restricted$guid) %>% .$title
## [1] "mwlefoodfieexombwkkeulbfd"
# "all" has access
content_list_guid_has_access(c_with_p, user_all$guid) %>% .$title
## [1] "pbcyvkgufivjubqtxvafbsnay" "mwlefoodfieexombwkkeulbfd"

Display the Content List

We plan to build a full example in Shiny (and to show example code below). However, suffice it to say that for RStudio Connect version 1.9.0 or newer, connectwidgets is a great way to plan to display your data, and provides several helpers for doing so!