Set permissions on folders

Goal

The goal of this manual is to show how to setup a group which has permissions only on a specific folder.

This manual starts with a running application and will add a group news-editors with the following permissions:

• editor permissions on documents in the folder news

• editor permissions on images in the folder news

• editor permissions on assets in the folder news

• read permissions on all (other) images

It is advisable to also read Repository Authorization and Permissions where some of the used terms are explained in more depth.

Prerequisites

• A running Hippo CMS application (see Getting Started) with the News feature added.

Create folder

• Log in to the CMS as admin

• Go to the documents perspective

• Create a (root) folder with the title news in images

• Create a (root) folder with the title news in assets

Create user and group

• Log in to the CMS as admin

• Go to the admin perspective

• Create a user journalist

• Create the group news-editors

• Make the user journalist member of news-editors

Create security domains

Security domains are configured in the Console.

A user (or group) is granted permissions by assigning a role to the user for a specific security domain. A security domain is basically a set of documents and folders or in JCR terminology a collection of nodes.

To achieve the above stated goal, two security domains are needed. One for which the news-editors group only has read permissions and one for which the news-editor group has editor permissions.

Import the security domains

• Download the attachments news-editors-read.xml and news-editors-editor.xml.

• Log in to the Console as admin

• Select the node  /hippo:configuration/hippo:domains

• Click on import and select the news-editors-read.xml file, leave all the settings at their defaults and click the import button

• Click on import and select the news-editors-editor.xml file, leave all the settings at their defaults and click the import button

• If your project has a different name than myhippoproject, replace myhippoproject with your project's name in the value properties the following nodes:

  • /hippo:configuration/hippo:domains/news-editors-editor/news-documents/path-by-uuid

  • /hippo:configuration/hippo:domains/news-editors-read/channel-node/node-by-uuid 

  • /hippo:configuration/hippo:domains/news-editors-read/news-node/node-by-uuid

• Click write changes to repository

The news-editors-read security domain gives the news editors read permissions to the following folders:

• the content folder

• the content/documents folder

• the  content/documents/myhippoproject folder

• the  content/documents/myhippoproject/news folder 

• the content/assets folder

• the content/gallery folder and all sub folders and documents

• the templates for new (document) folders, image folders and asset folders
  (the root node is allowed by default in defaultread)

The news-editors-editor security domain gives the news editors editor permissions to the following folders ( [channelname] has been replace by the appropriate channel ) as stated in the goal:

• the content/documents/myhippoproject/news folder and alls sub folders and documents

• the content/assets/news folder and alls sub folders and assets

• the content/gallery/news folder and alls sub folders and images

The domain rules in this example use two types of facet rules to allow permissions on a folder or node. These are the node-by-uuid and the path-by-uuid rules.

The node-by-uuid facet rule uses the fact that hippo:document nodes and all derived types are referenceable. The results in the fact that the nodes always have the jcr:uuid property set to their unique identifying uuid. The facet rule matches the node where the hipposys:facet (property) with the name jcr:uuid is equal to the specified value in hipposys:value. Instead of puting the uuid directly in the hipposys:value property, the Reference facet rule type is used and the path is set in the hipposys:value. At login the uuid of the path is looked up and the uuid of the node is used as value for matching.

The path-by-uuid facet rule is similar to the node-by-uuid facet rule, except that it doesn't match on the jcr:uuid property but on a node path. The facet rule will match the folder node itself and all its descendants.

Set permissions

• Log in to the CMS as admin

• Go to the permissions in the admin perspective

• Grant the group news-editors the role readwrite in defaultwrite

• Grant the group news-editors the role readonly in news-editors-read

• Grant the group news-editors the role editor in news-editors-editor

Configure CMS access

By default, only users with at least author-level access to /content/documents are authorized to use the CMS application. Because the news editors only have read access to /content/documents, we need to reconfigure who can use the CMS. See  Configure login to CMS and Console applications for more information.

• Log in to the  Console as admin

• Select the node /hippo:configuration/hippo:frontend/cms

• Change the value of the property privileges from   hippo:author to jcr:read

• Click Write changes to the repository

Test

• Log in to the CMS as journalist

• Check that only the folder news in documents is visible

• Add a document to the news folder

• Check that only the folder news in assets is visible

• Add an asset to the news folder

• Check that all images are visible

• Check that only images can be added to the news folder

Groovy script for easy configuration

A groovy script was created to allow admins to configure permissions on folders easily for the most common use cases. You can grab it here.