Valtuutus.Data.Postgres 1.0.0

Valtuutus

Valtuutus is a high-performance Relationship-Based Access Control (ReBAC) authorization library for .NET, inspired by Google Zanzibar.

It enables fine-grained authorization for ASP.NET Core and .NET applications — modeling permissions and access control through relationships instead of relying only on roles.

Features:

• Google Zanzibar-inspired permission model
• High-performance authorization engine
• ASP.NET Core / .NET integration
• Strongly typed schema support (source generator)
• Multiple evaluation engines (Check, LookupEntity, LookupSubject, SubjectPermission, Explain)
• Low-allocation execution
• Native AOT compatible

The implementation is inspired on permify and other ReBAC open source projects.

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Functionality

The library is designed to be simple and easy to use. Each subset of functionality is divided in engines. The engines are:

• ICheckEngine: The engine that handles the answering of three questions:
  • Can entity U perform action Y in resource Z? For that, use the Check function.
  • What permissions entity U have in resource Z? For that, use the SubjectPermission function.
  • Why did that permission check succeed or fail? For that, use the Explain function — returns a full resolution tree showing every evaluated relation, attribute, and expression.
• ILookupSubjectEngine: The engine that can answer: Which subjects of type T have permission Y on entity:X? For that, use the Lookup function.
• ILookupEntityEngine: The engine that can answer: Which resources of type T can entity:X have permission Y? For that, use the LookupEntity function. Supports scoped queries and cursor pagination — see below.
• IDataWriterProvider: This is the provider that can write your relational or attribute data.
• IDbDataWriterProvider: Works similarly to IDataWriterProvider, with the addition of accepting a connection and transaction as parameters.
• Read here about how the relational data is stored.
• Read here for engine usage examples (Check, Explain, SubjectPermission, LookupSubject, LookupEntity).

LookupEntity — scoped queries and pagination

LookupEntity returns a LookupEntityPage:

LookupEntityPage page = await lookupEntityEngine.LookupEntity(
    new LookupEntityRequest("task", "view", "user", "alice"),
    cancellationToken);

// page.EntityIds — IReadOnlyList<string>
// page.ContinuationToken — null if no more pages

Scope — constrain results to a parent entity

Use EntityScope when you need to answer a scoped question like "which tasks in project X can this user view?" — the same query you'd back a GET /projects/{projectId}/tasks endpoint with.

Without scope, LookupEntity returns all tasks the user can view across the entire system. With scope, results are limited to tasks that have the specified relation to the given parent entity — so only tasks belonging to project-1 are considered.

var page = await lookupEntityEngine.LookupEntity(
    new LookupEntityRequest("task", "view", "user", "alice")
    {
        Scope = new EntityScope(
            Relation: "parent",      // the relation on "task" that points to its parent
            SubjectType: "project",  // the parent entity type
            SubjectId: "project-1"   // the specific parent to scope to
        )
    },
    cancellationToken);

Pagination

string? token = null;
do
{
    var page = await lookupEntityEngine.LookupEntity(
        new LookupEntityRequest("task", "view", "user", "alice")
        {
            Scope = new EntityScope("parent", "project", "project-1"),
            PageSize = 50,
            ContinuationToken = token
        },
        cancellationToken);

    Process(page.EntityIds);
    token = page.ContinuationToken;
} while (token is not null);

Documentation

Usage

Install the package from NuGet:

If using Postgres:

dotnet add package Valtuutus.Data.Postgres

If using SqlServer:

dotnet add package Valtuutus.Data.SqlServer

If you prefer using an InMemory provider:

dotnet add package Valtuutus.Data.InMemory

Adding to DI:

builder.Services.AddValtuutusCore(c =>
        ... 

See examples of how to define your schema here.

If using Postgres:

builder.Services
    .AddPostgres(_ => () => new NpgsqlConnection(builder.Configuration.GetConnectionString("PostgresDb")!));

If using SqlServer:

builder.Services
    .AddSqlServer(_ => () => new SqlConnection(builder.Configuration.GetConnectionString("SqlServerDb")!));

If using InMemory:

builder.Services
    .AddInMemory();

Database migrations

If you are using a DB provider to store your data, please look at the scripts that create the tables that Valtuutus require to function.

• Postgres
• SqlServer

Schema and table name customization

Both relational providers accept an optional options object to customise the database schema and table names. Pass it as the second argument to AddPostgres or AddSqlServer:

// Postgres — defaults: schema="public", tables="transactions", "relation_tuples", "attributes"
builder.Services.AddValtuutusCore(/* schema */)
    .AddPostgres(
        _ => () => new NpgsqlConnection(connectionString),
        new ValtuutusPostgresOptions(
            schema:                 "authz",
            transactionsTableName:  "transactions",
            relationsTableName:     "relation_tuples",
            attributesTableName:    "attributes"));

// SQL Server — defaults: schema="dbo", same table names
builder.Services.AddValtuutusCore(/* schema */)
    .AddSqlServer(
        _ => () => new SqlConnection(connectionString),
        new ValtuutusSqlServerOptions(
            schema:                 "authz",
            transactionsTableName:  "transactions",
            relationsTableName:     "relation_tuples",
            attributesTableName:    "attributes"));

Make sure the migration script targets the same schema and table names you configure here.

ValtuutusPostgresOptions also exposes two Npgsql-specific properties for automatic prepared statements:

These map directly to Npgsql's prepared statement feature and can improve performance for repeated queries under load.

Using query concurrent limiting

It is expected that you don't want to allow Valtuutus to expand queries while it has resources. The default limit is 5 concurrent queries for the same request. To change that, you can use the AddConcurrentQueryLimit method, for example:

builder.Services
    .AddPostgres(_ => () => new NpgsqlConnection(builder.Configuration.GetConnectionString("PostgresDb")!)) // Replace this with any provider you want
    .AddConcurrentQueryLimit(10);

Change your data provider according to your database.

Caching

Valtuutus supports caching the calls to the engines through the Valtuutus.Data.Caching package. To use it, install like:

dotnet add package Valtuutus.Data.Caching

In your DI setup, add the caching component:

builder.Services
    .AddPostgres(_ => () => new NpgsqlConnection(builder.Configuration.GetConnectionString("PostgresDb")!)) // Replace this with any provider you want
    .AddCaching(); // <-- This line

This packages requires that you set up the amazing FusionCache library. Click here for more information.

Telemetry

The library uses OpenTelemetry to provide telemetry data. To enable it, just add a source with the name "Valtuutus":

builder.Services
    .AddOpenTelemetry()
    .WithTracing(telemetry =>
    {
        telemetry
            .AddSource("Valtuutus")
            ...