Access Manager v2 API for C# SDK
Access Manager 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-on
This method requires that the Access Manager add-on is enabled for your key in the Admin Portal. Read the support page on enabling add-on features on your keys.
This function establishes access permissions for Access Manager 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
andchannel
name. - User level privileges are based on the combination of
SubscribeKey
,channel
andAuthKeys
.
NTP configuration
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. Read the support article for more details.
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 witha.
.*
ora.b.*
won't work this way. If you grant on*
ora.b.*
, the grant treats*
ora.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 Access Manager rules are evaluated
When a user attempts to access a PubNub resource, Access Manager will evaluate any existing rules using the following order of precedence before access to a channel is granted to the user:
-
Application Level - Access Manager privileges are always evaluated first at the Application level. If either
read
orwrite
attribute is set totrue
for aSubscribeKey
, Access Manager will immediately grant access for that attribute without proceeding to check permissions at eitherChannel
orUser
levels. If an attribute is set tofalse
at the Application level, Access Manager 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, Access Manager evaluates the attribute at the Channel level. If an attribute is set to
true
for a combination ofSubscribeKey
andchannel
, Access Manager grants access for that attribute at theChannel
level without proceeding to check whether there may beuser
level permissions. -
User Level - As a final step Access Manager evaluates the attributes at the
User
level. If an attribute is set totrue
forSubscribeKey
,channel
andAuthKeys
, access is granted for that attribute.
grant method default
If an argument of the grant
is not provided, an expected default will be assumed.
read
andwrite
arguments default tofalse
- no
AuthKeys
results inchannel-level
grant - no
channel
results inapplication-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 Access Manager enabled application.
Privileges hierarchy
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 user
level 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 theSubscribeKey
orchannel
level. Note that you must grantread
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 a403
will be returned by Access Manager. - Presence To grant access to Presence for a particular channel name you must also allow
read
andwrite
access to the presencechannel
name which is specified by adding the-pnpres
suffix to the name. Also note that aleave
will fail in the case where a user's grant expires while connected. An HTTP403
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 Access Manager has expired, the read
and write
attributes are immediately set to false
for that entry in the Access Manager table.
Requests size
Access Manager 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.
Maximum message size
When the message size exceeds 32KB the server returns the HTTP Error code 500, instead of the correct error code 414.
Maximum number of channels
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# 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 | Description |
---|---|
Uuids Type: Array | 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 Type: Array | 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.
|
ChannelGroups Type: Array | 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 Type: Array | 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 Type: bool | Get permission. |
Update Type: bool | Update permission. |
Join Type: bool | Join permission. |
Write Type: bool | Write permission. |
Read Type: bool | Read permission. |
Delete Type: bool | Delete permission. |
Manage Type: bool | Manage permission. |
TTL Type: long | Time to live for permission to be valid |
QueryParam Type: Dictionary <string, object> | Dictionary object to pass name/value pairs as query string params with PubNub URL request for debug purpose. |
Async Type: PNCallback | PNCallback of type PNAccessManagerGrantResult |
Execute *Type: PNCallback | PNCallback of type PNAccessManagerGrantResult |
ExecuteAsync Type: None | Returns PNResult<PNAccessManagerGrantResult> . |
Basic Usage
Grant Access Manager Permissions for channel and AuthKeys
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 Access Manager Permissions for channel and AuthKeys synchronously
Grant subscribe access to a channel only for clients with a specific AuthKeys with a 5 minute ttl
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"
show all 18 linesAllow access to a specific channel for Presence
Grant Access Manager Permissions for channel group
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"
show all 18 linesGrant get, update, and delete access to a uuid only for clients with a specific AuthKeys with a 24 hrs ttl
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.
Channel Level Grant
User Level Grant