Access Manager v2 API for PubNub JavaScript SDK
PubNub Access Manager (PAM) allows you to enforce secure controls for client access to resources within the PubNub network. With PAM, 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 PAM 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 PAM, refer to Managing Permissions with Access Manager.
Supported and recommended asynchronous patterns
PubNub supports Callbacks, Promises, and Async/Await for asynchronous JS operations. The recommended pattern is Async/Await and all sample requests in this document are based on it. This pattern returns a status only on detecting an error. To receive the error status, you must add the try...catch
syntax to your code.
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-
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.
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.
Resource | Permissions |
---|---|
channel | read , write , get , manage , update , join , delete |
uuid | get , update , delete |
channelGroup | read , manage |
Wildcard notation allows you to grant permissions to multiple channels at a time and later revoke these permissions in the same manner. You can 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.*
.
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 eitherread
orwrite
attribute is set totrue
for asubscribeKey
, PAM 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, PAM proceeds to evaluate the attribute at the next most granular level. - 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 ofsubscribeKey
, andchannel
, PAM grants access for that attribute at theChannel
level without proceeding to check whether there may beuser
level permissions. - User Level (Recommended) - As a final step PAM evaluates the attributes at the
User
level. If an attribute is set totrue
forsubscribeKey
,channel
and auth Key, access is granted for that attribute. Similarly, user level grants also allow you granting an auth Key access tochannelGroups
anduuids
. User level grants requireauthKeys
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 JavaScript V4 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})
Parameter | Type | Required | Defaults | 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 , channelGroups , or uuids is mandatory. | Specifies up to 200 channels on which to grant permissions. Either channels , channelGroups , or uuids are required. This parameter supports wildcards that are one level deep ( a.* ). | |
channelGroups | Array | Specifying either channels , channelGroups , or uuids is mandatory. | Specifies up to 200 channel groups on which to grant permissions. Either channels , channelGroups , or uuids are required. This parameter does not support wildcards. | |
uuids | Array | Optional | Specifies up to 200 uuids on which to grant permissions. Either channels , channelGroups , or uuids are required. 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. Default is 1440 (24hrs) , Max is 525600 , Min is 1 . Setting ttl to 0 will apply the grant indefinitely. |
read | Boolean | Optional | false | Set to true to grant read permissions. Set to false to remove permissions. |
write | Boolean | Optional | false | Set to true to grant write permissions. Set to false to remove permissions. |
manage | Boolean | Optional | false | Set to true to grant manage permissions. Set to false to remove permissions. |
delete | Boolean | Optional | false | Set to true to grant delete permissions. Set to false to remove permissions. |
get | Boolean | Optional | false | Set to true to grant get permissions. Set to false to remove permissions. |
update | Boolean | Optional | false | Set to true to grant update permissions. Set to false to remove permissions. |
join | Boolean | Optional | false | Set to true to grant join permissions. Set to false to remove permissions. |
Basic Usage
Grant PAM Permissions for channel and auth Key
try {
const result = await pubnub.grant({
authKeys: ["my_authkey"],
channels: ["my_channel"],
ttl: 12313, // 0 for infinite
read: true, // false to disallow
write: true, // false to disallow
manage: true, // false to disallow
delete: true, // false to disallow
});
} catch (status) {
console.log(status);
}
{
"status" : 200,
"message" : "Success",
"payload" : {
"ttl" : 1440,
"auths" : {
"my_authkey" : {
"r" : 1,
"w" : 1,
"m" : 1,
"d" : 1,
"g" : 0,
"u" : 0,
"j" : 0
}
},
"subscribe_key" : "my_subkey",
"level" : "user",
"channel" : "my_channel"
},
"service" : "Access Manager"
}
Caution
PAM grant or revoke requests must be less than ~32KiB at a time, or the client will return an error. For requests greater than 32KiB, break them into smaller batched requests. When the message size exceeds 32KiB the server returns the HTTP Error code 500, instead of the correct error code 414.
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.
Other Examples
Grant access to a channel on an authKey
Grant
read
permission to a channel only for clients with a specificauthKey
with a 5 minutettl
:try { const result = await pubnub.grant({ authKeys: ["my_authkey"], channels: ["my_channel"], ttl: 5, read: true, // false to disallow write: false, // false to disallow }); } catch (status) { console.log(status); }
Grant access to presence channel on an authKey
Grant
read
andwrite
permissions to anauthKey
on a presence channel with a 5 minutettl
:try { const result = await pubnub.grant({ authKeys: ["my_authkey"], channels: ["my_channel-pnpres"], ttl: 5, read: true, // false to disallow write: true, // false to disallow }); } catch (status) { console.log(status); }
Grant access to a UUID on an authKey
Grant
get
,update
, anddelete
access to auuid
only for clients with a specificauthKey
with a 24 hourttl
:try { const result = await pubnub.grant({ authKeys: ["key1"], uuids: ["uuid1"], ttl: 1440, // 0 for infinite get: true, // false to disallow update: true, // false to disallow delete: true, // false to disallow }); } catch (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 defaultttl
(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.
const result = await pubnub.grant({ read: true, });
Grant access to a channel on all authKeys
This request grants
read
andwrite
permissions to a specific channel for all users (noauthKey
required) with defaultttl
(1440 minutes). This rule applies on the channel level and takes precedence over user-level permissions.try { const result = await pubnub.grant({ channels: ["my_channel"], read: true, // false to disallow write: true, // false to disallow }); } catch (status) { console.log(status); }