Be advised: this project is currently at Major version zero. Per the semantic versioning spec: "Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything may change at any time. The public API should not be considered stable."

Javascript library which authorizes access based on pipeline of plugable async stages

Why?

Problem

Authorization logic typically differs between calls.

In a codebase of reasonable size/complexity, this results in

• bloat due to boilerplate/repeated code
• hard to follow logic due to lack of standardization

Solution

Authorize access via a standardized processing pipeline of plugable async stages a.k.a middleware.

Each middlware is called in order &:

• receives the most recently returned accessCtx or the default accessCtx object, along w/ the original request
• can return an updated accessCtx
• can throw to skip all other middleware & deny access
• can call accessCtx.grant() to skip all other middleware & grant access

If no stages call accessCtx.grant(), an error will be thrown.

In this way the boilerplate code goes away & only the authorization rules remain, defined in a standard/re-useable way.

Installation

NPM

npm install --save authorize-access

Yarn

yarn add authorize-access

Examples

// for some business logic you want to authorize access to...
const authorizeAccess = require('authorize-access')
const jsonWebToken = require('jsonwebtoken')

const accessCtx = await authorizeAccess(
  {userId: 'XXX'},
  [
    // You should put middleware in some common location & re-use it; inlined here for demo purposes
    // 
    // middleware to verify JWT
    (accessCtx, request) => jsonWebToken.verify(request.accessToken, 'XXXX' {algorithms: ['HS256']}),
    // middleware to verify request is from auth'd user
    (accessCtx, request) => (accessCtx.userId === request.userId) && accessCtx.grant()
  ]
)

// either accessCtx of granted access or error thrown

Support

open an issue

Releases

releases are versioned according to and tagged; see CHANGELOG.md for release notes

Contributing

see CONTRIBUTING.md