Access Manager API for PubNub AngularJS SDK

Access Manager v2

This is the outdated Access Manager v2 API. For details about the latest version, see Access Manager v3.

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 and channel name.
User level privileges are based on the combination of subscribeKey, channel and auth Key.

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 more in the support article.

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:

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.
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.
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 auth Key, 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 auth Key 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.

Important

Note that 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 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. 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.

Caution

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.

Warning

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

Note

When you init with secretKey, you get root permissions for the Access Manager. With this feature you don't have to grant access to your servers to access channel data. The servers get all access on all channels.

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 AngularJS SDK:

grant({Array channels, Array channelGroups, Array uuids, Array authKeys, Number ttl, Boolean read, Boolean write, Boolean manage, Boolean delete, Boolean get, Boolean update, Boolean join},Function callback)

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
`authKeys`	Array	Optional		Specifies `authKey` to grant permissions. It is possible to specify multiple `auth` keys as comma separated list in combination with a single `channel` name. `authKeys` are required for user-level grants. If you don't specify an `authKey`, the permissions will apply to all clients on channel-level or application-level. View the Grant Levels section for more details.
`channels`	Array	Specifying either `channels` or `channelGroups` is mandatory.		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 by specifying the `channels` as a comma-separated list. 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	Specifying either `channels` or `channelGroups` is mandatory.		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 by specifying the `channelGroups` as a comma separated list. This parameter does not support wildcards.
`uuids`	Array	Optional		A list of `uuids` to `grant` permissions to. 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.
`ttl`	Number	Yes	`1440 (24hrs)`	Time in minutes for which granted permissions are valid. The default value is `1440 (24hrs)` and the allowed values range from `1` to `525600`. If you set `ttl` to `0`, it will apply the grant indefinitely.
`read`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	`Read` permissions are granted by setting to `true`. `Read` permissions are removed by setting to `false`.
`write`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	`Write` permissions are granted by setting to `true`. `Write` permissions are removed by setting to `false`.
`manage`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	`Manage` permissions are granted by setting to `true`. `Manage` permissions are removed by setting to `false`.
`delete`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `delete` permissions. Set to `false` to remove `delete` permissions.
`get`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `get` permissions. Set to `false` to remove `get` permissions.
`update`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `update` permissions. Set to `false` to remove `update` permissions.
`join`	Boolean	Optional	`false`	Set to `true` to grant `join` permissions. Set to `false` to remove `join` permissions.
`callback`	Function	Optional		Executes on a successful/unsuccessful `grant`.

Basic Usage

Grant Access Manager Permissions for channel and auth Key

Pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['my_channel'],
        authKeys: ['my_rw_authkey'],
        read: true,
        write: true,
        ttl: 5
    },
    function (status) {
        // handle state setting response
    }
);

Other Examples

// grant world read access to all channels

Pubnub.grant({
    read: true
});

// grant world read/write to my_channel

Pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['my_channel'],
        read: true,
        write: true
    },
    function (status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

// allow user read only access to my_channel

Pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['my_channel'],
        authKeys: ['my_ro_authkey'],
        ttl: 5,
        read: true,
        write: false
    },
    function (status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

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

{
    error: false,
    operation: 'PNAccessManagerGrant',
    statusCode: 200
}

Allow access to a specific channel for Presence

// Allow world read / write access to my_channel-pnpres

Pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['my_channel-pnpres'],
        ttl: 5,
        read: true,
        write: true
    },
    function (status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

Grant access to all channels on all authKeys

This request grants read permission to all users on all channel(s) with default ttl (1440 minutes). This rule applies on the application level and takes precedence over channel and user-level permissions.

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.

pubnub.grant({
    read: true
});

Channel Level Grant

Pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['ch1'],
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true // false to disallow
    },
    function (status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

Grant access to a channel on an authKey

Grant read permission to a channel only for clients with a specific authKey with a 5 minute ttl:

Pubnub.grant(
    {
        channels: ['ch1'],
        authKeys: ['key1'],
        read: true, // false to disallow
        write: true // false to disallow
    },
    function (status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

UUID Level Grant

pubnub.grant(
    {
        uuids: ['uuid1'],
        authKeys: ['key1'],
        ttl: 60, // 0 for infinite
        get: true, // false to disallow
        update: true, // false to disallow
        delete: true // false to disallow
    },
    function (status) {
        console.log(status);
    }
);

Access Manager v2

Grant​

Requires Access Manager add-on

NTP configuration

Wildcard Permissions​

Wildcard revokes

How Access Manager rules are evaluated​

Use application level grants with caution

grant method default

Important

Related Behavior​

Duration of Permissions​

Caution

Warning

Note

Note

Method(s)​

Basic Usage​

Grant Access Manager Permissions for channel and auth Key​

Other Examples​

Grant subscribe privileges to all users on all channel(s) with default ttl (1440 minutes)​

Allow subscribe and publish to a specific channel for all users (no auth Key required) with default ttl (1440 minutes)​

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

Allow access to a specific channel for Presence​

Grant access to all channels on all authKeys​

Use application level grants with caution

Channel Level Grant​

Grant access to a channel on an authKey​

UUID Level Grant​

Grant

Wildcard Permissions

How Access Manager rules are evaluated

Related Behavior

Duration of Permissions

Method(s)

Basic Usage

Grant Access Manager Permissions for channel and auth Key

Other Examples

Grant subscribe privileges to all users on all channel(s) with default ttl (1440 minutes)

Allow subscribe and publish to a specific channel for all users (no auth Key required) with default ttl (1440 minutes)

Grant subscribe access to a channel only for clients with a specific auth Key with a 5 minute ttl

Allow access to a specific channel for Presence

Grant access to all channels on all authKeys

Channel Level Grant

Grant access to a channel on an authKey

UUID Level Grant