Access Manager v2 API for PubNub C# SDK

PubNub Access Manager (PAM) extends PubNub's existing security framework by allowing developers to create and enforce secure access to channels and channel groups throughout the PubNub Real-Time Network.

As soon as Access Manager is enabled, no pub/sub-operations can be done without first explicitly providing an authorization token to the PubNub object. If an invalid token is provided, the requesting client will receive a Forbidden Error.

Learn more about Access Manager here.

Grant

Requires Access Manager add-onRequires that the Access Manager add-on is enabled for your key. See this page on enabling add-on features on your keys:
https://support.pubnub.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051974791-How-do-I-enable-add-on-features-for-my-keys-

Description

This function establishes access permissions for PubNub Access Manager (PAM) by setting the read or write attribute to true. A grant with read or write set to false (or not included) will revoke any previous grants with read or write set to true. Permissions can be applied to any one of three levels:

Application level privileges are based on SubscribeKey applying to all associated channels.
Channel level privileges are based on a combination of SubscribeKey and channel name.
User level privileges are based on the combination of SubscribeKey, channel and AuthKeys.

Warning

For NTP synchronization, please ensure that you have configured NTP on your server to keep the clock in sync. This is to prevent system clock drift leading to 400 Invalid Timestamp error response.

https://support.pubnub.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051973331-Why-do-I-get-Invalid-Timestamp-when-I-try-to-grant-permission-using-Access-Manager-

Wildcard Permissions

Wildcard notation allows you to grant permissions to multiple channels at a time and later revoke these permissions in the same manner. You can only go one level deep using wildcards. In other words:

a.* grants access on all channels that begin with a..
* or a.b.* won't work this way. If you grant on * or a.b.*, the grant treats * or a.b.* as a channel name, not a wildcard.

Wildcard revokes

You can revoke permissions with wildcards from one level deep, like a.*, only when you initially used wildcards to grant permissions to a.*.

How PAM rules are evaluated:

When a user attempts to access a PubNub resource, PAM will evaluate any existing rules using the following order of precedence before access to a channel is granted to the user:

Application Level - PAM privileges are always evaluated first at the Application level. If either read or write attribute is set to true for a SubscribeKey, PAM will immediately grant access for that attribute without proceeding to check permissions at either Channel or User levels. If an attribute is set to false at the Application level, PAM proceeds to evaluate the attribute at the next most granular level.

Use application level grants with caution

When access is granted on an application level, all channels and users will have access.

Application level grants can also happen due to a bug in your code. For example, Null parameters for channels and auth-keys can cause accidental application level grants.
Channel Level - After first verifying an attribute at the Application level, PAM evaluates the attribute at the Channel level. If an attribute is set to true for a combination of SubscribeKey and channel, PAM grants access for that attribute at the Channel level without proceeding to check whether there may be user level permissions.
User Level - As a final step PAM evaluates the attributes at the User level. If an attribute is set to true for SubscribeKey, channel and AuthKeys, access is granted for that attribute.

Note

If an argument of the grant is not provided, an expected default will be assumed.

read and write arguments default to false
no AuthKeys results in channel-level grant
no channel results in application-level grant

No Permissions - If no permissions were granted at any of the three levels, the user will be denied access to the PubNub resource and receive a 403 error message. This is the default behavior for a PAM enabled application.

Important

Note that privileges specifically granted to an application's SubscribeKey always take precedence over privileges granted to channel or AuthKeys. Therefore an application that requires authentication at the userlevel should not grant access at either the Application or Channel levels.

Related Behavior:

History To access historical messages you must grant full read access at either the SubscribeKey or channel level. Note that you must grant read access to each channel in a channel group individually. When a user has the appropriate permissions they can access any data stored. If they do not have access a 403 will be returned by PAM.
Presence To grant access to Presence for a particular channel name you must also allow read and write access to the presence channel name which is specified by adding the -pnpres suffix to the name. Also note that a leave will fail in the case where a user's grant expires while connected. An HTTP 403 will be returned.
APNS Standard permissions are required for publishing.

Duration of Permissions:

The duration of permission set with Grant() are controlled by setting a time-to-live(TTL). If a TTL is not specified it is automatically set to 1440 minutes by default. Once the TTL associated with an entry in PAM has expired, the read and write attributes are immediately set to false for that entry in the PAM table.

Caution

PAM grant or revoke requests must be less than ~32KB at a time, or the client will return an error. For requests greater than 32KB, break them into smaller batched requests.

Warning

When the message size exceeds 32KB the server returns the HTTP Error code 500, instead of the correct error code 414.

Note

The limit on the total amount of channels that you can pass at once when using Grant() is 200.

Method(s)

To Grant Permissions on a Channel you can use the following method(s) in the C# V4 SDK:

pubnub.Grant().Uuids(Array).Channels(Array).ChannelGroups(Array).AuthKeys(Array).Get(bool).Update(bool).Join(bool).Write(bool).Read(bool).Delete(bool).Manage(bool).TTL(long).QueryParam(Dictionary<string,object>)

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`Uuids`	Array	Optional	Specifies a list of `uuids` on which to `grant` permissions. You can't grant permissions to channels and channel groups in the same request if you decide to use `uuids`. This parameter does not support wildcards.
`Channels`	Array	Optional	Specifies the `channels` on which to `grant` permissions. If no `channels/channelGroups` are specified, then the `grant` applies to any and all `channels/channelGroups` that have been or will be created for that `publish/subscribe` key set. Furthermore, any existing or future grants on specific `channels` are ignored, until the `all channels` grant is revoked. It is possible to `grant` permissions to multiple `channels` simultaneously.Wildcard notation like `a.` can be used to `grant` access on channels. You can `grant` one level deep. `a.` - you can grant on this. `` and `a.b.` - grant will not work on these levels. If you grant on `` or `a.b.`, the grant will treat `` or `a.b.` as a single channel named either `` or `a.b.`.
`ChannelGroups`	Array	Optional	Specifies the `channelGroups` to `grant` permissions. If no `channels/channelGroups` are specified, then the `grant` applies to any and all `channels/channelGroups` that have been or will be created for that `publish/subscribe` key set. Furthermore, any existing or future grants on specific `channelGroups` are ignored, until the `all channelGroups` grant is revoked. It is possible to `grant` permissions to multiple `channelGroups` simultaneously. This parameter does not support wildcards.
`AuthKeys`	Array	Optional	Specifies `auth` Key to grant permissions. It is possible to specify multiple `auth` keys. You can also grant access to a single `auth` key for multiple `channels` at the same time. Zero or more `channels` with zero or more `auth` tokens are allowed.
`Get`	bool	Optional	`Get` permission.
`Update`	bool	Optional	`Update` permission.
`Join`	bool	Optional	`Join` permission.
`Write`	bool	Optional	`Write` permission.
`Read`	bool	Optional	`Read` permission.
`Delete`	bool	Optional	`Delete` permission.
`Manage`	bool	Optional	`Manage` permission.
`TTL`	long	Optional	`Time to live` for permission to be valid
`QueryParam`	Dictionary<string, object>	Optional	Dictionary `object` to pass name/value pairs as query `string` params with PubNub URL request for debug purpose.
`Async`	PNCallback	Deprecated	`PNCallback` of type `PNAccessManagerGrantResult`
`Execute`	PNCallback	Yes	`PNCallback` of type `PNAccessManagerGrantResult`
`ExecuteAsync`	None	Optional	Returns `PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult>`.

Basic Usage

Grant PAM Permissions for channel and AuthKeys

PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> grantResponse = await pubnub.Grant()
    .Channels(new string[]{
        //channels to allow grant on
        "ch1",
        "ch2",
        "ch3"
    })
    .ChannelGroups(new string[] {
        // groups to allow grant on
        "cg1",
        "cg2",
        "cg3"
        })
    .AuthKeys(new string[] {
        // the keys we are provisioning
        "key1",
        "key2",
        "key3"
    })
    .Write(true) // allow those keys to write (false by default)
    .Manage(true) // allow those keys to manage channel groups (false by default)
    .Read(true) // allow keys to read the subscribe feed (false by default)
    .Delete(true) // allow those keys to delete the subscribe feed (false by default)
    .TTL(12337) // how long those keys will remain valid (0 for eternity)
    .ExecuteAsync();

PNAccessManagerGrantResult grantResult = grantResponse.Result;
PNStatus status = grantResponse.Status;
// PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server

Returns

The Grant() operation returns a PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> which contains the following properties:

Property Name	Type	Description
`Result`	PNAccessManagerGrantResult	Returns a `PNAccessManagerGrantResult` object.
`Status`	PNStatus	Returns a `PNStatus` object.

PNAccessManagerGrantResult contains the following properties:

Property Name	Type	Description
`Level`	string	Subkey or `channel` level.
`Ttl`	int	`Ttl` of `grant`.
`SubscribeKey`	string	The `SubscribeKey`.
`Channels`	Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, PNAccessManagerKeyData>>	Access rights per `channel`. See PNAccessManagerKeyData for more details.
`ChannelGroups`	Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, PNAccessManagerKeyData>>	Access rights per `channel group`. See PNAccessManagerKeyData for more details.

PNAccessManagerKeyData

Property Name	Type	Description
`ReadEnabled`	bool	`true` if the user has `read` rights.
`WriteEnabled`	bool	`true` if the user has `write` rights.
`DeleteEnabled`	bool	`true` if the user has `delete` rights.
`ManageEnabled`	bool	`true` if the user has `manage` rights.

Other Examples

Grant PAM Permissions for channel and AuthKeys synchronously:

pubnub.Grant()
    .Channels(new string[]{
        //channels to allow grant on
        "ch1",
        "ch2",
        "ch3"
    })
    .ChannelGroups(new string[] {
        // groups to allow grant on
        "cg1",
        "cg2",
        "cg3"
     })
    .AuthKeys(new string[] {
        // the keys we are provisioning
        "key1",
        "key2",
        "key3"
    })
    .Write(true) // allow those keys to write (false by default)
    .Manage(true) // allow those keys to manage channel groups (false by default)
    .Read(true) // allow keys to read the subscribe feed (false by default)
    .Delete(true) // allow those keys to delete the subscribe feed (false by default)
    .TTL(12337) // how long those keys will remain valid (0 for eternity)
    .Execute(new PNAccessManagerGrantResultExt(
        (result, status) => {
            // PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server
        }
    ));

Grant subscribe access to a channel only for clients with a specific AuthKeys with a 5 minute ttl:

PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> grantResponse = await pubnub.Grant()
    .Channels(new string[] {
        "my_channel"
    })
    .Write(false)
    .Read(true)
    .Delete(false)
    .AuthKeys(new string[] {
        "my_ro_authkey"
    })
    .TTL(5)
    .ExecuteAsync();

PNAccessManagerGrantResult grantResult = grantResponse.Result;
PNStatus status = grantResponse.Status;
// PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server

The above code would return the following response to the client:

{
    "status" : 200,
    "message" : "Success",
    "payload" : {
        "ttl" : 5,
        "auths" : {
            "my_ro_authkey" : {
                "r" : 1,
                "w" : 0,
                "d" : 0
            }
        },
        "subscribe_key" : "my_subkey",
        "level" : "user",
        "channel" : "my_channel"
    },
    "service" : "Access Manager"
}

Allow access to a specific channel for Presence:

PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> grantResponse = await pubnub.Grant()
    .Channels(new string[] {
        "my_channel-pnpres"
    })
    .Write(true)
    .Read(true)
    .Delete(true)
    .ExecuteAsync();

PNAccessManagerGrantResult grantResult = grantResponse.Result;
PNStatus status = grantResponse.Status;
// PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server

Grant PAM Permissions for channel group:

PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> grantResponse = await pubnub.Grant()
    .ChannelGroups(new string[] {
        "cg1",
        "cg2",
        "cg3"
    })
    .AuthKeys(new string[] {
        "key1",
        "key2",
        "key3"
    })
    .Write(true)
    .Manage(true)
    .Read(true)
    .Delete(true)
    .TTL(12337)
    .ExecuteAsync();

PNAccessManagerGrantResult grantResult = grantResponse.Result;
PNStatus status = grantResponse.Status;
// PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server

The above code would return the following response to the client:

{
    "status":200,
    "message":"Success",
    "payload":{
        "ttl":5,
        "auths":{
            "my_rw_authkey":{
                "r":1,
                "w":1,
                "d":1
            }
        },
        "subscribe_key":"my_subkey",
        "level":"user",
        "channel":"my_channel"
    },
    "service":"Access Manager"
}

Grant get, update, and delete access to a uuid only for clients with a specific AuthKeys with a 24 hrs ttl:

PNResult<pnaccessmanagergrantresult> grantResponse = await pubnub.Grant()
    .Uuids(new string[] {
        "my_uuid"
    })
    .Get(true)
    .Update(true)
    .Delete(true)
    .AuthKeys(new string[] {
        "my_ro_authkey"
    })
    .TTL(1440)
    .ExecuteAsync();

PNAccessManagerGrantResult grantResult = grantResponse.Result;
PNStatus status = grantResponse.Status;
// PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server
</pnaccessmanagergrantresult>

Application Level Grant

Use application level grants with caution

When access is granted on an application level, all channels and users will have access.

Application level grants can also happen due to a bug in your code. For example, Null parameters for channels and auth-keys can cause accidental application level grants.

PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> grantResponse = await pubnub.Grant()
    .Write(true)
    .Read(true)
    .Delete(true)
    .ExecuteAsync();

PNAccessManagerGrantResult grantResult = grantResponse.Result;
PNStatus status = grantResponse.Status;
// PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server

Channel Level Grant

PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> grantResponse = await pubnub.Grant()
    .Channels(new string[] {
        "my_channel"
    })
    .Write(true)
    .Read(true)
    .Delete(true)
    .ExecuteAsync();

PNAccessManagerGrantResult grantResult = grantResponse.Result;
PNStatus status = grantResponse.Status;
// PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server

User Level Grant

PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> grantResponse = await pubnub.Grant()
    .Channels(new string[] {
        "my_channel"
    })
    .Write(true)
    .Read(true)
    .Delete(true)
    .AuthKeys(new string[]{
        "my_authkey"
    })
    .TTL(5)
    .ExecuteAsync();

PNAccessManagerGrantResult grantResult = grantResponse.Result;
PNStatus status = grantResponse.Status;
// PNAccessManagerGrantResult is a parsed and abstracted response from server