Acl.Net.Core

Acl.Net.Core is a C# library that provides a simple and flexible way to manage Access Control Lists (ACLs). It is designed to be used with Entity Framework Core and allows you to easily define and manage Users, Roles, and Resources in your application.

Note

Acl.Net.Core NuGet package not supporting starting with v1.0.0. This package has been split to two package Acl.Net.Core.Database and Acl.Net.Core.Managers

Installation

To use Acl.Net.Core, need to install one of two package Acl.Net.Core.Database or Acl.Net.Core.Managers

• Acl.Net.Core.Database: provides EFCore DbContext for ACL system.
• Acl.Net.Core.Managers: provides AclManager for AclDbContext.

.NET CLI

dotnet add package Acl.Net.Core.Database
dotnet add package Acl.Net.Core.Managers

Package Manager

Install-Package Acl.Net.Core.Database
Install-Package Acl.Net.Core.Managers

Usage

The library provides several classes and interfaces that you can use to manage access control in your application.

Entities

The library defines three main entities: User, Role, and Resource. Each of these entities has a generic version that allows you to specify the type of the ID. The library provides default implementations that use int as the ID type.

User

The User entity represents a user in your application. It has an Id, a Name, and a RoleId property. The RoleId property is used to associate the user with a role.

Example using generic version

var user = new User<Guid>
{
    Id = Guid.NewGuid(),
    Name = "John Doe",
    RoleId = ROLE_GUID_HERE
};

Role

The Role entity represents a role in your application. It has an Id and a Name property.

Example using generic version

var role = new Role<Guid>
{
    Id = Guid.NewGuid(),
    Name = "MyRole"
};

Resource

The Resource entity represents a resource in your application. It has an Id, a Name, and a RoleId property. The RoleId property is used to associate the resource with a role.

Example using generic version

var resource = new Resource<Guid>
{
    Id = Guid.NewGuid(),
    Name = "MyResource",
    RoleId = ROLE_GUID_HERE
};

AclDbContext

The library provides a AclDbContext class that you can use to manage the entities in your application. This class is a subclass of DbContext and provides DbSet properties for the User, Role, and Resource entities.

The AclDbContext class also has a generic version that allows you to specify the types of the entities. This can be useful if you want to use your own entity classes that inherit from the provided entities.

The AclDbContext class uses an IInitialDataSeeder to seed initial data into the database. The library provides a RoleDataSeeder class that seeds two roles: Admin and User.

Example using generic version

public class MyDbContext : AclDbContext<Guid, MyUser, MyRole, MyResource>
{
    public MyDbContext(DbContextOptions options, IInitialDataSeeder<Guid, MyRole> seeder)
        : base(options, seeder)
    { }
}

In this example, MyDbContext is a subclass of AclDbContext that uses Guid as the ID type and MyUser, MyRole, and MyResource as the entity types.

IInitialDataSeeder Interface

The IInitialDataSeeder interface is a crucial part of the Acl.Net.Core library. It is used to seed initial data into the database when the migrations applied. The library provides a default implementation, RoleDataSeeder, which seeds role: Admin.

The IInitialDataSeeder interface is used in the AclDbContext and AclManager classes to seed the initial roles and to check permissions. In the AclManager class, if a user has the Admin role, they are allowed access to any resource.

The IInitialDataSeeder interface defines method: SeedAdminRole. These methods return instances of the Role entity that represent the admin role, respectively.

public interface IInitialDataSeeder<TKey, out TRole>
    where TKey : IEquatable<TKey>
    where TRole : Role<TKey>
{
    TRole SeedAdminRole();
}

In the RoleDataSeeder class, the SeedAdminRole method returns a new Role with Id set to 1 and Name set to "Admin".

public class RoleDataSeeder : IInitialDataSeeder<int, Role<int>>
{
    public Role<int> SeedAdminRole()
    {
        return new Role<int> { Id = 1, Name = "Admin" };
    }
}

Managers

Note

By default, for Admin allows any resource!

The library provides a AclManager class that you can use to manage access control in your application. This class provides methods to check if a user is permitted to access a resource or resource list.

The AclManager class also has a generic version that allows you to specify the types of the entities. This can be useful if you want to use your own entity classes that inherit from the provided entities.

The AclManager class provide methods to process users and resources, and to check if a user is permitted to access a resource.

// Check if user "userName" permitted for call "resourceName"
var context = new MyDbContext();
var aclManager = new AclManager<Guid, MyUser, MyRole, MyResource>(context);
bool isPermitted = aclManager.IsPermitted("userName", "resourceName");

Other documentation

• Acl.Net.Core.Database docs
• Acl.Net.Core.Managers docs