[Koha-devel] RFC: granular permissions

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Henri-Damien LAURENT
<laurenthdl at alinto.com> wrote:
>  Very good.
>  just a question.
>  How hard would it be to add permisions to a simple link/action ?

I don't think this will be hard to do - just time consuming, given the
number of functions that Koha users may want to have sliced and diced.
 For most scripts, the pattern is to call get_template_and_user very
early; I think that will change so that first the script determines
what operation is to be done, then set up the flagsrequired hash
appropriately.

>  Say :
>   I want to A to make a basket but not to close it (in Acquisition module).
>  Only B has the right to close a basket.
>  following your schema, I could add close_Basket Permission and maybe use
>  Template::Expr to test the permission in template.

The way I've designed it, you don't need to use Template::Expr; there
would a separate binary CAN_user_XXX_YYY for each specific permission.
 I think most of the work of implementing specific privileges for
acquisitions, circulation, and cataloging will be carefully adjusting
the templates so that a user with limited privileges doesn't get
dumped into the login page unexpectedly.

>  And I have a big trouble :
>  Who, when, how will be maintained the list of all the permissions ?
>  My proposition is that mysql/en/permissions.sql should be authoritative.

Agreed.

>  But it should be accounted that it HAS to be translated.

Agreed.  I added a mysql/fr-FR/1-Obligatoire/userpermissions.sql as a
placeholder in parallel with the existing userflags.sql, but I don't
view that as a long-term solution.  I'll think about it and see if I
can come up with a general approach for exposing strings that are
stored in the database to the translation mechanism.

>  And somehow it should be declared on the wiki, just as all the ccl terms
>  and indexes.

Agreed.  I propose a few conventions for the permissions codes (which
I admittedly haven't been 100% consistent about in the list for
tools):

* view_XXX = view record type XXX
* edit_XXX = edit record type XXX
* first word or word group in the code is a verb
* don't put in a negative, e.g., don't have something like
'cannot_edit_orders'.  A permission should be a positive grant of a
privilege.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Koha Application Developer
LibLime
galen.charlton at liblime.com
p: 1-888-564-2457 x709


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