Access Control (ACL)

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Overview

Micleo uses CASL package for providing access control. Which is future oriented (Also supports Vue 3) and is more detailed on Access Control.

You can find docs for here.

CASL may look complex at first so please make sure you first read their docs carefully and understand base logic of Access Control to proceed further.

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ACL Flow

You can find CASL configuration in src/plugins/acl folder. Let’s explore what each file contains:

• ability.js: This file exports ACL ability
• checkaccess.js Route protection files and custom ACL.
• config.js: ACL configuration. Currently, contains initial ability of user.
• index.js: Main ACL file for injecting ACL in Vue.

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Route Protection

You can protect your route from being visited by other users through as well. We already configured router.beforeEach hook to redirect user to not authorized page if user don’t have ability for that route. All you have to do is use route meta to define user ability.

{
  path: '/finance-summary',
  name: 'finance-summary',
  component: () => import('@/views/FinanceDetails.vue'),
  meta: {
    resource: 'Finance',
    action: 'read',
  },
},

Here, resource refers to subject in CASL docs.

Once you define ability for route using meta, if user don’t have defined ability for visiting route then it will get redirected to not authorized page.

If user is not logged in and try to visit the route with ability which user don’t have then user will get redirected to login page instead of not authorized page.

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Omitting Defining resource and action for route

If you do not define resource and action then only user with below ability will be able to visit the route:

{
  action: 'manage',
  subject: 'all',
}

So, in your project if you don’t have any user with above mentioned ability and you don’t define action and resource for route then no one will be able to visit that route ever.

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Show/Hide Navigation Items

Besides route protection you can also show/hide navigation items based on user ability.

Besides existing options provided by navigation items there’s two more option you can specify if you use ACL.

• resource: This refers to subject in CASL docs
• action: This is action for ability. Add these two options in your navigation item to show/hide navigation items based on user ability.

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Omitting defining resource and action for groups

You can optionally define resource & action on navigation item type which have children:

• Vertical Navigation Menu Group
• Horizontal Navigation Menu Group
• Horizontal Navigation Menu Header Group

e.g. If you have vertical navigation menu group and your provided both options for every group child and you want to hide group if all it’s child don’t have ability then don’t worry about adding both option in menu group options. We already handled hiding group if none of it’s child is visible. Means, We will hide group if there’s no child to render due to lack of ability.

export default [
  {
    title: 'Invoice',
    icon: mdiFile,

    /** Both group child have `resource` and `action` defined
     * So, If I omit defining `resource` and `action` for group
     *    => then group will be hidden if both child are hidden
     *
     * Conclusion: You can omit defining `resource` and `action` for group if you want this kind of behavior
     */
    children: [
      {
        title: 'List',
        route: 'invoice-list',
        resource: 'Invoice',
        action: 'read',
      },
      {
        title: 'Trash',
        route: 'invoice-trash',
        resource: 'Invoice',
        action: 'read',
      },
    ],
  },
]

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Group & ACL scenarios

1. If group can be viewed can any of it’s child can also be viewed then group will be visible.
2. If Group can be viewed and all it’s children are hidden then group also got hidden.
3. If Group can’t be viewed then in all cases group and it’s children will be hidden. It will be hidden even if any of or all of it’s children can be viewed.

Please note this scenarios apply to all three group types of navigation item:

• Vertical Navigation Menu Group
• Horizontal Navigation Menu Group
• Horizontal Navigation Menu Header Group