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:

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


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 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 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:

  1. Application Level - Access Manager privileges are always evaluated first at the Application level. If either read or write attribute is set to true for a SubscribeKey, Access Manager 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, 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.

  2. 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 of SubscribeKey and channel, Access Manager grants access for that attribute at the Channel level without proceeding to check whether there may be user level permissions.

  3. User Level - As a final step Access Manager 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.

grant method default

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 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 userlevel should not grant access at either the Application or Channel levels.

  • 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 Access Manager.
  • 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 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>)
* required
ParameterDescription
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.
  • 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
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>.

Sample code​

Grant Access Manager permissions for channel and AuthKeys​


Returns​

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

Property NameTypeDescription
Result
PNAccessManagerGrantResult
Returns a PNAccessManagerGrantResult object.
Status
PNStatus
Returns a PNStatus object.

PNAccessManagerGrantResult contains the following properties:

Property NameTypeDescription
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 NameTypeDescription
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 lines

Allow 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 lines

Grant 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​


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