Content Permissions

Cole Arendt

8/9/2021

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/RtmpdejRES/bundledir2bef7c08bd0a)

content_1 <- deploy(client, bnd, title = "App 1")

## Getting content endpoint

## Found EXISTING content 9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e 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 31d7f7fd-65c6-42ce-a474-d4c0ede8ae3c 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: 9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e/
##   Task ID: LTTccghU0lFH1mlI

set_content_tags(content_2, tag_1)

## Posit Connect Tag Tree (content)
## └── Example
##    └── Permissions

## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 31d7f7fd-65c6-42ce-a474-d4c0ede8ae3c
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/31d7f7fd-65c6-42ce-a474-d4c0ede8ae3c/
##   Task ID: PL3mbTc1nMdtr5XI

content_add_user(content_1, user_restricted$guid, role = "viewer")

## Adding permission for user 'c1f8e5fa-7fa6-4ab2-804c-2b596f180b0d' with role 'viewer'

## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e/
##   Task ID: LTTccghU0lFH1mlI

content_add_user(content_1, user_all$guid, "viewer")

## Adding permission for user '3f5ee3fc-44b1-4912-9db0-ed5f79b31889' with role 'viewer'

## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e/
##   Task ID: LTTccghU0lFH1mlI

content_add_user(content_2, user_all$guid, "viewer")

## Adding permission for user '3f5ee3fc-44b1-4912-9db0-ed5f79b31889' with role 'viewer'

## Posit Connect Content Task: 
##   Content GUID: 31d7f7fd-65c6-42ce-a474-d4c0ede8ae3c
##   URL: http://localhost:32768/connect/#/apps/31d7f7fd-65c6-42ce-a474-d4c0ede8ae3c/
##   Task ID: PL3mbTc1nMdtr5XI

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
c_with_p <- content_list_with_permissions(client, .p = function(.x) {
  .x$guid %in% content_guids
})

## Getting content list
## Getting permission list

# 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     31d7f7fd-65c6-42ce-a474-d4c0ede8ae3c 3f5ee3fc-44b1… user           view…
## 2 NA    31d7f7fd-65c6-42ce-a474-d4c0ede8ae3c 58dfc227-8e53… user           owner
## 
## [[2]]
## # A tibble: 3 × 5
##   id    content_guid                         principal_guid principal_type role 
##   <chr> <chr>                                <chr>          <chr>          <chr>
## 1 1     9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e c1f8e5fa-7fa6… user           view…
## 2 2     9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e 3f5ee3fc-44b1… user           view…
## 3 NA    9012a654-86fe-4a8f-80f8-901286f6600e 58dfc227-8e53… 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!