Datasette --get --actor option

[simonw]

I experimented with a prototype of this here:

• API tokens with view-table but not view-database/view-instance cannot access the table #2102 (comment)_

Which lets me run requests as if they belonged to a specific actor like this:

datasette fixtures.db --get '/fixtures/facetable.json' --actor '{
    "_r": {
        "r": {
            "fixtures": {
                "facetable": [
                    "vt"
                ]
            }
        }
    },
    "a": "user"
}'

Really useful for testing actors an _r options. Is this worth adding as a feature?

[simonw]

Building that "_r" array is the main reason this would be useful, but it's also fiddly to get right.

datasette create-token has a design for that already: https://docs.datasette.io/en/1.0a4/authentication.html#datasette-create-token

datasette create-token root \
    --secret mysecret \
    --all view-instance \
    --all view-table \
    --database docs view-query \
    --resource docs documents insert-row \
    --resource docs documents update-row

Adding imitations of those options (excluding --secret, not needed here) to datasette serve would add a LOT of extra options, but it would also make it really convenient to attempt a request with a specific set of restrictions. Not sure if that would be worth the extra --help output or not.

I feel like the names would have to have a common prefix though. Maybe something like this:

datasette serve data.db --get `/data/mytable.json' \
  --actor-id root \
  --r-all view-instance \
  --r-database data view-query \
  --r-resource data documents update-row

Other options could be the longer --restrict-all/--restrict-database/--restrict-resource.

[simonw]

Another option: implement this as a plugin, providing a new command like datasette get ...

Or implement datasette client get ... as core commands or a plugin - except that clashes with the datasette client command that https://github.com/simonw/dclient adds (which is a tool for hitting remote Datasette instances, not running simulated queries through a local one).

[simonw]

Annoying that datasette client ... makes a great name both for a plugin that executes simulated queries against a local database (thanks to its similarity to the existing datasette.client Python API) but is also the ideal name for a command for running commands as a client of an external Datasette instance!

[simonw]

datasette serve currently only has a --get - for this to be really useful it needs to grow --post and maybe other verbs too.

Which is a good argument for moving this functionality to datasette client get ... instead.

[simonw]

Documentation:

• https://docs.datasette.io/en/latest/cli-reference.html#datasette-get