Grant role to "class" in spring security - grails

Question

Here's a (fictive) structure (sorry, I know I don't have a strong imagination) which to resembles the structure of my application:
(Person, SuperPerson and NormalPerson are abstract):
I'm wondering if I can grant roles to each class (so all the instances of this class will get these rights) using spring security in Grails.

Answer 1

No, Spring Security grants roles at the instance, not class, level.
There are two ways to grant authorities (permissions):
Grant them directly to a principle (user)
Grant them to a group (role), and then add principles to the groups containing the authorities then need.
So in your case, you can take the role-based approach and have each class represented by a role. Then, when you create an instance of a class, add it to the appropriate role.
Example of using a service to grant authorities
class PersonService {
private Map authorityGroups = [
Person: ['Person'],
NormalPerson: ['Person', 'NormalPerson'],
Employee: ['Person', 'NormalPerson', 'Employee'],
...
]
Person create(Class klass, Map props) {
def person = klass.newInstance(props)
def groups = getGroupsForClass(klass)
person.save()
groups.each {
new PersonAuthorityGroup(authorityGroup: it, person: person).save()
}
}
private Collection<AuthorityGroup> getGroupsForClass(Class klass) {
authoritiyGroups[klass.simpleName].collect {
AuthorityGroup.findByName(it)
}
}
}
The service can then be used like this:
def a = personService.create(Person, [first: 'John', last: 'Galt'])
def b = personService.create(SuperPerson, [first: 'Jane', last: 'Smith'])