Access Manager v2 API for Dart SDK

Access Manager allows you to enforce secure controls for client access to resources within the PubNub network. With Access Manager, your servers can grant their clients access to individual PubNub resources for a limited duration, with the ability to extend access or add permissions for additional resources.

As soon as Access Manager is enabled, no publish/subscribe 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.

For more information about Access Manager, refer to Managing Permissions with Access Manager.

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.

The grant method allows you to grant permissions for one or more resources to one or more authKeys. You may need to make multiple grant calls with an authKey so that you can specify explicit permissions for each channel, channelGroup and uuid resources. For common permissions, you can normally use a single request.

Privileges specifically granted to an application's subscribeKey always take precedence over privileges granted to channel or auth_key. Therefore an application that requires authentication at the user level should not grant access at either the Application or Channel levels. View the Grant Levels section for more details.

Permissions​

The grant request allows your server to securely grant access for your clients on the following resources within the platform. Each resource allows a limited set of permissions that control the operations that can be performed by the clients. For permissions and API operations mapping information, refer to Managing Permissions with Access Manager

ResourcePermissions
channel
read, write, get, manage, update, join, delete
uuid
get, update, delete
channelGroup
read, manage

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.*.

Grant levels​

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.
  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 (Recommended) - As a final step Access Manager evaluates the attributes at the User level. If an attribute is set to true for subscribeKey, channel and auth_key, access is granted for that attribute. Similarly, user level grants also allow you granting an auth_key access to channelGroups and uuids. User level grants require auth_key and are the recommended approach if you need to manage permissions for individual users within your application. Each user should be assigned a unique auth_key and securely passed back to the user to perform operations on the platform.

Method(s)​

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

pubnub.grant(
  Set<String> authKeys,
    {Set<String>? channels,
    Set<String>? channelGroups,
    Set<String>? uuids,
    bool? write,
    bool? read,
    bool? manage,
    bool? delete,
    bool? get,
    bool? update,
    bool? join,
    int? ttl,
    Keyset? keyset,
    String? using}
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* required
ParameterDescription
authKeys
Type: Set<String>
Default:
n/a
Specifies authKey to grant permissions to.
It's possible to specify multiple auth keys.
You can also grant access to a single authKey for multiple channels at the same time. Zero or more channels with zero or more auth tokens are allowed.
channels
Type: List<String>
Default:
n/a
Specifies the channels on which to grant permissions.
If no channels/channelGroups are specified, then the grant applies to 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's 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: List<String>
Default:
n/a
Specifies the channelGroups to grant permissions. If no channels/channelGroups are specified, then the grant applies to 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's possible to grant permissions to multiple channelGroups simultaneously.
write
Type: Boolean
Default:
false
Write permission.
read
Type: Boolean
Default:
false
Read permission.
manage
Type: Boolean
Default:
false
Manage permission.
delete
Type: Boolean
Default:
false
Delete permission.
get
Type: Boolean
Default:
false
Get permission.
update
Type: Boolean
Default:
false
Update permission.
join
Type: Boolean
Default:
false
Join permission.
ttl
Type: Long
Default:
Not set
Time in minutes for which granted permissions are valid. Setting ttl to 0 will apply the grant indefinitely, which is also the default behavior.
keyset
Type: Keyset
Default:
default keyset
Override for the PubNub default keyset configuration.
using
Type: String
Default:
n/a
Keyset name from the keysetStore to be used for this method call.

Sample code​

Grant Access Manager permissions for channel and auth_key​

var result = await pubnub.grant({'my_authKey'},
    channels: {'my_channel'}, read: true);

Returns​

The grant() operation returns a PamGrantResult which contains the following properties:

Property NameTypeDescription
warning
Boolean
Warning status.
message
String
Information whether operation was successful or not.
level
String
Access rights level.
ttl
int
ttl of grant.
permissions
List<Permission>
Access rights per resource.

Permission contains the following properties:

Property NameTypeDescription
channel
String
Channel name for which permission is set.
uuid
String
UUID for which permission is set.
read
Boolean
true if the resource has read rights.
write
Boolean
true if the resource has write rights.
manage
Boolean
true if the resource has manage rights.
delete
Boolean
true if the resource has delete rights.
get
Boolean
true if the resource has get rights.
update
Boolean
true if the resource has update rights.
join
Boolean
true if the resource has join rights.

Other examples​

Grant subscribe access to a channel only for clients with a specific auth_key with a 5 minute ttl​

var result = await pubnub.grant({'my_authKey'},
    channels: {'my_channel'}, read: true, write: false, ttl: 5);

The above code returns the following response to the client:

{
    "status" : 200,
    "message" : "Success",
    "payload" : {
        "ttl" : 5,
        "auths" : {
            "my_authkey" : {
                "r" : 1,
                "w" : 1,
                "m" : 0,
                "d" : 0,
                "g" : 0,
                "u" : 0,
                "j" : 0
            }
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Allow access to a specific channel for Presence​

var result = await pubnub.grant({'my_authKey'},
    channels: {'my_channel-pnpres'}, read: true, write: true);

Grant Access Manager permissions for channel group​

var result = await pubnub.grant({'my_authKey'},
    channelGroups: {'my_channelGroup'}, read: true, manage: true, ttl: 5);

The above code returns the following response to the client:

{
"status" : 200,
"message" : "Success",
"payload" : {
    "ttl" : 5,
    "auths" : {
        "my_authkey" : {
            "r" : 1,
            "w" : 0,
            "m" : 1,
            "d" : 0,
            "g" : 0,
            "u" : 0,
            "j" : 0
        }
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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.

var result = await pubnub.grant({}, write: true, read: true, delete: true);

Channel level grant​

var result =  await pubnub.grant({},
    channels: {'my_channel'},
    read: true,
    write: true,
    delete: true,
    ttl: 1440);

User level grant​

var result = await pubnub.grant({'my_authKey'},
    channels: {'my_channel'},
    ttl: 1440,
    get: true,
    update: true,
    delete: true);
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