Access Manager v2 API for PHP 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.

Resource	Permissions
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 using the builder pattern, you can use the following method(s) in the PHP SDK:

grant()
    ->authKeys(String | Array[String] )
    ->channels( String | Array[String] )
    ->channelGroups( Array[String] ) 
    ->ttl(integer | null )
    ->read(boolean)
    ->write(boolean)
    ->manage(boolean)
    ->delete(boolean
    ->get(boolean)
    ->update(boolean)
    ->join(boolean)

* required

Parameter	Description
authKeys() * Type: String or Array[String] Default: n/a	Specifies auth Key to grant permissions. It is possible to specify multiple auth keys as comma separated list in combination with a single channel name. 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.
channels() * Type: String or Array[String] Default: n/a	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.*.
uuids() Type: Array[String] Default: n/a	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.
channelGroups() * Type: Array[String] Default: n/a	Specifies up to 200 channel groups on which to grant permissions. Either channels, channelGroups or uuids are required. This parameter does not support wildcards.
ttl() * Type: Integer Default: 1440 i.e 24 hrs.	Time in minutes for which granted permissions are valid. Max : 525600 Min : 1 Setting 0 will apply the grant indefinitely (forever grant).
read() * Type: Boolean Default: False	Read permissions are granted by setting to True. Read permissions are removed by setting to False.
write() * Type: Boolean Default: False	Write permissions are granted by setting to true. Write permissions are removed by setting to false.
manage() * Type: Boolean Default: False	Manage permissions are granted by setting to True. Manage permissions are removed by setting to False.
delete() * Type: Boolean Default: False	Delete permissions are granted by setting to True. Delete permissions are removed by setting to False.
get() * Type: Boolean Default: False	Get permissions are granted by setting to True. Get permissions are removed by setting to False.
update() * Type: Boolean Default: False	Update permissions are granted by setting to True. Update permissions are removed by setting to False.
join() * Type: Boolean Default: False	Join permissions are granted by setting to True. Join permissions are removed by setting to False.

Sample code

Grant Access Manager permissions for channel and AuthKey

require_once _DIR_ . '/../src/autoloader.php';
require_once _DIR_ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';
$pnconfig = new \PubNub\PNConfiguration();
$pnconfig->setSecretKey("demo");
$pnconfig->setPublishKey("demo");
$pnconfig->setSubscribeKey("demo");
$pubnub = new \PubNub\PubNub($pnconfig);
$channels = ["ch1", "ch2"];
$auth_key = "blah";
$read = true;
$write = false;
$ttl_mins = 15;
try {
    $result = $pubnub->grant()
                  ->channels($channels)

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Returns

The grant() operation returns a PNAccessManagerGrantResult which contains the following fields:

Parameter	Description
getLevel() Type: String	Permissions level, one of Subscribe key, Subscribe key+auth, channel, channel-group, channel-group + auth level.
getTtl() Type: Integer	Time to live value.
getSubscribeKey() Type: String	The subscribe key.
getChannels() Type: Array	Access rights per channel. See PNAccessManagerChannelData below for more details.
getChannelGroups() Type: Array	Access rights per channel. See PNAccessManagerChannelGroupData below for more details.
getUsers() Type: Array	Access rights per channel. See PNAccessManagerUserData below for more details.
isReadEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level read permissions.
isWriteEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level write permissions.
isManageEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level manage permissions.
isDeleteEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level delete permissions.
isGetEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level get permissions.
isUpdateEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level update permissions.
isJoinEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level join permissions.

PNAccessManagerChannelData, PNAccessManagerGroupData and PNAccessManagerUserData have the same fields structure.

Parameter	Description
getAuthKeys() Type: Array	Access rights per auth-key. See PNAccessManagerKeyData for more details.
getTtl() Type: Integer	Time to live value.
getName() Type: String	Channel, group or user name.
isReadEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level read permissions.
isWriteEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level write permissions.
isManageEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level manage permissions.
isDeleteEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level delete permissions.
isGetEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level get permissions.
isUpdateEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level update permissions.
isJoinEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level join permissions.

PNAccessManagerKeyData

Parameter	Description
getTtl() Type: Integer	Time to live value.
isReadEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level read permissions.
isWriteEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level write permissions.
isManageEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level manage permissions.
isDeleteEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level delete permissions.
isGetEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level get permissions.
isUpdateEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level update permissions.
isJoinEnabled() Type: Boolean	Subscribe key level join permissions.

Read, write and manage permissions hav 3 states:

• true if enabled.
• false if disabled.
• None if not explicitly set.

Other examples

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

$pubnub->grant()
    ->read(true)
    ->write(true)
    ->sync();

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

$pubnub->grant()
    ->channels("my_channel")
    ->read(true)
    ->write(true)
    ->sync();

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

$pubnub->grant()
    ->channels("my_channel")
    ->read(true)
    ->write(false)
    ->authKeys("my_ro_authkey")
    ->ttl(5)
    ->sync();

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_Subscribe key",
        "level" : "user",
        "channel" : "my_channel"

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Allow access to a specific channel for Presence

$pubnub->grant()
    ->channels("my_channel-pnpres")
    ->read(true)
    ->write(true)
    ->sync();

Grant Access Manager permissions for channel group

$result = $pubnub->grant()
              ->channelGroups(["cg1", "cg2", "cg3"])
              ->authKeys(["key1", "key2", "auth3"])
              ->read(true)
              ->write(true)
              ->manage(true)
              ->ttl(12237)
              ->sync();

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_Subscribe key",
        "level":"user",
        "channel":"my_channel"

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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.

try {
    $result = $pubnub->grant()
        ->read(true)
        ->write(true)
        ->sync();

    print_r($result);
} catch (\PubNub\Exceptions\PubNubServerException $exception) {
    print_r($exception->getMessage() . "\n");
    print_r($exception->getStatusCode() . "\n");
    print_r($exception->getBody());
} catch (\PubNub\Exceptions\PubNubException $exception) {
    print_r($exception->getMessage());
}

Channel level grant

$result = $pubnub->grant()
              ->channels("my_channel")
              ->read(true)
              ->write(true)
              ->sync();

User level grant

$result = $pubnub->grant()
              ->channels("my_channel")
              ->authKeys("my_authkey")
              ->read(true)
              ->write(true)
              ->ttl(5)
              ->sync();