Is it possible to set a scope to a domain class? - grails

I'd like to know if it's possible with grails to specify a scope for the domain classes.
Few words to explain how my application is working at the moment:
- database access is done through an external "module" using SQLJ. This module is user by controllers in my grails app.
- a user ask for specific information submitting forms -> request submitted to the external module -> information extracted from the database -> information loaded into grails mem DB (HSQL) -> information displayed in views.
It works fine in development environment as i'm the only one using the application. But i'm wondering how the application would behave with two or more users. I mean, do the information loaded into grails memory database will be shared between users or not? And how not to shared information requested by one user with the others?
Thanks in advance for any help about this subject.
Regards.

All data in the database is shared across all users of the grails application. You would have to write a custom query to limit the data returned to a specific user. Based on your application maybe something similar to the following.
class DomainClass1 {
//fields you get from SQLJ go here
int userId
}
To get data into an instance of your domain class.
def domInstance=new DomainClass1()
domInstance.loadFromSQLJ() //call the SQLJ module and put it's data in the domain class
domInstance.userId=5 //assign the user associated with this info
domInstance.save()
Then when you want to display info for the user with the userId 5
def domInstance2=DomainClass1.findByUserId(5)
//Do stuff with domInstance2

It will be shared between all users.
But it depends on you, as for any other database, there must be some criteria (db column) by which you can choose only information related to current user.

In our project, we overrode domain classes' get(), list() that take into account domain aggregate root (a User or whatever), and also check all the named queries.
This leaves off all the other means of accessing instances, like findBy*(), criteria, findWhere() (though you can also override the dynamic methods), or HQL, but anyway reduces the amount of security review by 80%.
Suddenly it turned out to be OK to use DomainClass.list() in scaffolding.

Related

How can I use group membership to restrict results?

In an MVC application, for a given action that all users are authorized to perform, I would like to filter results based on the user's group membership. For instance ...
Users in GroupA should only see records pertaining to BuildingX.
Users in GroupB should only see records pertaining to BuildingY.
Users in GroupC should see all records.
I have no problem using authorization filters to restrict access to Actions, but I'm having a much harder time finding how to restrict access to data short of explicitly modifying statements every place where data is fetched.
Assuming your records are in a database, the roles membership model doesn't extend to the database out of the box. You can build a roles-based access control for your database, but you will likely save time using a simpler approach. For example, using code like this in your controller:
if (Roles.IsUserInRole("GroupA")) {
// Get data for GroupA.
}
// Display data...
A year later, working on a different but related issue, I found the EntityFramework.DynamicFilters package which does exactly what I need!

MVC Session for storing user information vs DB call

I have a user details area that is split out on to about 6 different pages (details, contact, preferences, etc). I need to have access to all of the user details after login.
I was going to add the user details to a Session like this after login so that I could access them all from the different pages without having to call the database on each page;
Session["name"] = name;
Session["bla"] = bla;
However I've googled and some people talk about saving the session to a database, which sounds like i may as well not use it. The users may not access every page or require access to all of this information, so it could be seen as a bit needless to add them all to a Session.
Is there a recommended practice for storing user information like this? I also have an ID that needs to be shown on every page. Perhaps something like this is better for a session and the more detailed info pages to keep with their own database calls?
.
EDIT: I am using Umbraco 7.2.8 and am getting the member details from the MemberService. I am worried that it hits the database each time though. My code to get the Member details and also the custom member properties (currently in each controller) is;
// Get the details of the user currently logged in
var profileModel = Members.GetCurrentMemberProfileModel();
// Get the custom properties for the member
var member = memberService.GetByUsername(profileModel.UserName);
model.Firstname = profileModel.Name;
model.Email = profileModel.Email;
model.specialID = member.Properties["specialID"].Value.ToString();
Any pointers would be great!
If you use the built in Umbraco Member service (link 1, link 2) to manage your users, you'll have a relatively simple way to get current logged in member. It's also easy to manage the member profiles with custom data fields and so on. No need to think too much about sessions and such.
Edit: take a look in here - specifically the GetCurrentPersistedMember() method - Umbraco is using caching to save current member
There are three popular ways to store the data in memory
1) Caching
2) Session
3) Static Classes
Out of above three I will always prefer Caching, as numerous articles suggested and I too agree that Sessions are comparatively slow than Caching & Static classes. I would always prefer caching over sessions.
But whatever you use, make sure that you are initializing them at single place, so that all the sessions and caching used in whole application is known to every developer. This will help in code re-usability & reduces the duplication of initializing the same value again in system. It will also help in code-maintainability.

Custom Join table in grails

I have a following domains
User (in database called usermanagement) and
Account (in another database xyz)
Its an old system so i cannot really change the architecture of the system. I have been assigned task to implement a system that a certain users can only access certain accounts. This is a classic case of many-to-many relationship but the problem lies in the fact that these two domains are in two different databases. I googled if that was possible but i realized that it was not possible. So I now am thinking of creating a custom join table to store info on which user are allowed access to which accounts. The table can have two columns 'accountId' and 'userId'. So for this, do i have to create a new domain in grails or is there any cleaver way of doing this ?
Thanks in advance.
If you create joinTable in which DB you are going to create it and how you are going handle updates in main (Account,User) tables and ceep your join table up2date ?
I think (for this case) you don't need join table, you need handle business logic in application level.
You cane have 2 Domain classes each one pointed to different dataSource(DataBase).
http://grails.org/doc/latest/guide/conf.html#multipleDatasources
As I searched for solution of this, I did not find any sustainable solutions. I eventually narrowed down the probable solutions to two:
1. Create a domain table (only) using sql, some sort of patch and use hard-coded queries in grails to write and access data to and from the table.
2. Create a domain class like AccountUser having properties clientId and userId
I choose the 2nd option, I wrote some additional methods and created a service to return user and client instance and I am done ! Anyways, thanks guys.
If the databases are "visible" to each other (on the same server or there is a db link between them), you should be able to map the domain classes using the fully qualified table names ('schema.tablename') in the mapping closure.
psuedocode:
class User {
static mapping = {
table "usermanagement.user"
}
static hasMany = [Account:accounts]
}
class Account {
static mapping = {
table "xyz.account"
}
}
http://grails.org/doc/latest/guide/GORM.html#tableAndColumnNames

Symfony Admin Generator in multi user setup (restricting records in LIST view)

I am using SF 1.2.9 to build a website. I want to use the admin generator to provide admin functionality for the object models I have used (specifically LIST, edit and delete).
I have read the Symfony docs (Chapter 14), but unless, I am very much mistaken, all examples I have come accross so far, seems to be written for a single user environment only. Meaning that the list of records returned to the user is essentially, ALL the records in that table. In a multiuser environment, this is irresposible at best, and potentially, a security threat. It is a necessary requirement to restrict the list of records returned to a user to only those that they own (i.e. created).
Suppose I have a table with (YML) schema like this:
foobar_dongle:
id: ~
title: varchar(255)
info: longvarchar
owner_id: ~
created_at: ~
where owner id is a FK into a user table.
Assume I generate an admin module like this:
symfony propel:generate-admin backend FoobarDongle --module=dongle
Question:
How do I modify the list of records returned to a user in the LIST part of the code generated by the admin generator? As I mentioned above, currently, (i.e. out of the box), the admin generator presents the user (rather naively, I feel), with the ENTIRE set of records for the model being administered. I need to be able to restrict that list somehow, so that I can only return records owned by that user.
This is what I am trying to find out how to do.
I would be most grateful to anyone who can show me how I can restrict the list of records returned when using the admin generator for administration of an object model. Ideally, I would like to be able to specify a custom method that has all the custom 'filtering' logic - but so long as I can restrict the LIST of records a user can see (in admin), to only the records that he is the owner of, that is all I want to be able to do.
If you only want to restrict the returned objects in one or two modules, do this:
Go to the actions.class.php file of your module. There should be no methods by default and the class should inherit from autoModuleNameActions you. Insert the following method:
protected function buildQuery()
{
$query = parent::buildQuery();
// do what ever you like with the query like
$query->andWhere('user_id = ?', $this->getUser()->getId());
return $query;
}
But this becomes unhandy if you do it for more modules. In this case I would advice to create a new admin generator theme.
And if you want to make the query depending on some custom parameter in the admin generator config file, then you have to extend this file. But is not just done with adding a new parameter. You can read this article how to do this.
If you want to know more about the auto generated classes, have a look at this class: cache/[app]/[env]/modules/auto[ModuleName]/actions/actions.class.php.
Edit after comments:
I think you looked at the wrong class. Look here: cache/[app]/[env]/modules/auto[ModuleName]/actions/actions.class.php.
I set up a Propel project to check it and the method that is interesting for you is:
protected function buildCriteria()
{
if (is_null($this->filters))
{
$this->filters = $this->configuration->getFilterForm($this->getFilters());
}
$criteria = $this->filters->buildCriteria($this->getFilters());
$this->addSortCriteria($criteria);
$event = $this->dispatcher->filter(new sfEvent($this, 'admin.build_criteria'), $criteria);
$criteria = $event->getReturnValue();
return $criteria;
}
I also posted the whole content of this class to pastebin. It is a lot, the function is in line 245. Even if you don't find this class, you should be able to override this method like this:
protected function buildCriteria()
{
$criteria = parent::buildCriteria();
// do something with it
return $criteria;
}
I don't know about these criteria objects, so I can't help you with that but I hope the other things help you.
You should use sfGuardPlugin to provide your login/user functionality - it includes user groups and permissions that can be assigned to users and/or groups.
Using security.yml you can then configure which permissions/credentials are required to access individual actions. IE: you can allow everyone to access the list/update/delete actions, but only people with the create permission to access the create page.
The docs for sfGuardPlugin are worth reading:
http://www.symfony-project.org/plugins/sfGuardPlugin
Plus this section from the jobeet tutorial covers sfGuard and also use of security.yml and credentials:
http://www.symfony-project.org/jobeet/1_2/Propel/en/13
And to round off, this page from the book is relevant too:
http://www.symfony-project.org/reference/1_2/en/08-Security (although not sure it covers anything that isn't in the page i linked from jobeet)

ACL on field level in Grails

in our new software project, we have the following requirement: A webpage shall show a set of data. This data shall be editable by some users (assigned to roles, i.e. manager), and only viewable by others. The tricky part is described by an example:
A User-page consists of address data and account information. The addess data shall be editable by the user and the manager and viewable by all users, while account information shall only be viewable by the actual user and the manager.
I have read a lot of information about SpringSecurity. It provides a very good framework to gran permissions on urls and methods and even domain classes. But what I need is field level ACLs. At least, that's what I think at the moment.
So, the question is: How to solve this problem using Grails?
Thanks a lot in advance,
Regards Daniel
Spring Security (Acegi Plugin) is definitely the way to go with Grails.
There is a taglib you can use that will allow a page to be different for different roles such as the following:
<g:ifUserHasRole roles="ROLE_ADMIN">
html code for extra fields
</g:ifUserHasRole>
Me, I'd encode it on the domain class, emulating the way GORM has you annotate the domain classes (static access = [field1: "ROLE_USER", field2: "ROLE_ADMIN,ROLE_USER"] as an example). Then build a method your controller could use to redact them for a given user. That method could use the domain class's annotations to decide how to redact it. Then, metaprogram it onto each of the domain classes the way plugins do.
Similarly, write the opposite method to restrict data bindings of params into the domain class, write your own data binding utility method, then metaprogram it onto each domain class as well.
Then you can just use instance.redact(user) or instance.bindData(params, user) to do what you want, and it's practically declarative syntax.
We have a similar situation and use both the ifUserHasRole tag in the gsp to drive the appropriate presentation and the we have a filter that enforces the rules based on the action being called. For example, on user controller we would only allow the management roles to call save action, or if the user.id is the same as the session.user.id. This seemed to be the best option for our situation.
What about creating an ACL class like this:
class ACL(val entry: Entry*) {
def isAccessAllowed(subject: String, permission: String): Boolean = ...
}
class Entry(val subject: String, val permission: String*)
usage:
new ACL(
new Entry("dave", "read", "write"),
new Entry("linda", "read")
)
(This example is in Scala, because I found it more expressive in this case, but it should be easy to transfer it to Groovy.)
You would then connect an ACL object with the object to be protected.

Resources