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Organizations and authorization

.. versionchanged:: 2.0
   Previous versions of CKAN used a different authorization system.

CKAN's authorization system controls which users are allowed to carry out which actions on the site. All actions that users can carry out on a CKAN site are controlled by the authorization system. For example, the authorization system controls who can register new user accounts, delete user accounts, or create, edit and delete datasets, groups and organizations.

Authorization in CKAN can be controlled in three ways:

  1. Organizations
  2. Configuration file options
  3. Extensions

The following sections explain each of the three methods in turn.

Note

An organization admin in CKAN is an administrator of a particular organization within the site, with control over that organization and its members and datasets. A sysadmin is an administrator of the site itself. Sysadmins can always do everything, including adding, editing and deleting datasets, organizations and groups, regardless of the organization roles and configuration options described below.

Organizations

Organizations are the primary way to control who can see, create and update datasets in CKAN. Each dataset can belong to a single organization, and each organization controls access to its datasets.

Datasets can be marked as public or private. Public datasets are visible to everyone. Private datasets can only be seen by logged-in users who are members of the dataset's organization. Private datasets are not shown in general dataset searches but are shown in dataset searches within the organization.

When a user joins an organization, an organization admin gives them one of three roles: member, editor or admin.

A member can:

  • View the organization's private datasets.

An editor can do everything as member plus:

  • Add new datasets to the organization
  • Edit or delete any of the organization's datasets
  • Make datasets public or private.

An organization admin can do everything as editor plus:

  • Add users to the organization, and choose whether to make the new user a member, editor or admin
  • Change the role of any user in the organization, including other admin users
  • Remove members, editors or other admins from the organization
  • Edit the organization itself (for example: change the organization's title, description or image)
  • Delete the organization

When a user creates a new organization, they automatically become the first admin of that organization.

Configuration File Options

The following configuration file options can be used to customize CKAN's authorization behavior:

Extensions

CKAN extensions can implement custom authorization rules by overriding the authorization functions that CKAN uses. This is done by implementing the :py:class:`~ckan.plugins.interfaces.IAuthFunctions` plugin interface.

Dataset visibility is determined by permission labels stored in the search index. Implement the :py:class:`~ckan.plugins.interfaces.IPermissionLabels` plugin interface then :ref:`rebuild your search index <rebuild search index>` to change your dataset visibility rules. There is no no need to override the package_show auth function, it will inherit these changes automatically.

To get started with writing CKAN extensions, see :doc:`/extensions/index`.