Menu Permissions

This guide demonstrates a Spring Boot application that implements menu-based access control using jCasbin. The approach shown here serves as a foundation for building menu permission middleware that can be adapted to other Casbin-supported languages like Go and Python.

1. Fichiers de configuration

Configure role permissions and menu hierarchies in the policy.csv file. For a complete working example, see the jCasbin menu permission repository.

1.1 Vue d'ensemble

The policy.csv file enables granular access control by defining role-based permissions for menu items, user-role assignments, and hierarchical menu structures. This configuration combines three elements: which roles can access which menu items, which users belong to which roles, and how menus relate to each other in the navigation hierarchy.

1.2 Définitions des permissions (Politiques)

Policy Rules: Each policy line starts with p and defines whether a role (sub) has permission to perform an action (act) on a menu item (obj). The effect (eft) is either allow or deny.

Exemples :

p, ROLE_ROOT, SystemMenu, read, allow grants ROLE_ROOT read access to SystemMenu.
p, ROLE_ROOT, UserMenu, read, deny denies ROLE_ROOT read access to UserMenu.

1.3 Rôles et associations d'utilisateurs

Role Inheritance: Lines starting with g define user-role assignments and role inheritance chains. Users automatically inherit permissions from all their assigned roles.

Exemples :

g, user, ROLE_USER assigns the user named user to ROLE_USER.
g, ROLE_ADMIN, ROLE_USER makes ROLE_ADMIN inherit all permissions from ROLE_USER.

Menu Relationships: Lines starting with g2 define parent-child relationships between menu items, establishing the menu structure.

Exemples :

g2, UserSubMenu_allow, UserMenu makes UserSubMenu_allow a child of UserMenu.
g2, (NULL), SystemMenu marks SystemMenu as a top-level menu with no parent.

jCasbin applies specific inheritance rules when determining menu access based on parent-child relationships:

Héritage des permissions de menu parent :

When a parent menu has explicit allow permission, all child menus inherit allow by default unless explicitly set to deny. Granting access to a parent menu automatically grants access to its children.

Gestion des menus parents sans paramètres de permission directs:

When a parent menu has no explicit permission but contains at least one child menu with explicit allow permission, the parent menu is implicitly granted allow status. This ensures users can reach the accessible child menus.

1.6 Règles spéciales d'héritage des permissions

Role inheritance interacts with deny permissions according to these rules:

Distinction entre les refus explicites et par défaut:

Explicit deny permissions always take precedence. When a role like ROLE_ADMIN is explicitly denied access to AdminSubMenu_deny, no role that inherits from ROLE_ADMIN (such as ROLE_ROOT) can access that menu. Explicit denials cannot be overridden through role inheritance.

Héritage des permissions de refus par défaut:

Default denials (menus that lack an explicit allow) work differently. When UserSubMenu_deny is implicitly denied to ROLE_USER simply because no allow rule exists, a role inheriting from ROLE_USER (like ROLE_ADMIN) can override this by adding its own explicit allow rule.

1.7 Description de l'exemple

politique:

p, ROLE_ROOT, SystemMenu, read, allow
p, ROLE_ROOT, AdminMenu, read, allow
p, ROLE_ROOT, UserMenu, read, deny
p, ROLE_ADMIN, UserMenu, read, allow
p, ROLE_ADMIN, AdminMenu, read, allow
p, ROLE_ADMIN, AdminSubMenu_deny, read, deny
p, ROLE_USER, UserSubMenu_allow, read, allow

g, user, ROLE_USER
g, admin, ROLE_ADMIN
g, root, ROLE_ROOT
g, ROLE_ADMIN, ROLE_USER

g2, UserSubMenu_allow, UserMenu
g2, UserSubMenu_deny, UserMenu
g2, UserSubSubMenu, UserSubMenu_allow
g2, AdminSubMenu_allow, AdminMenu
g2, AdminSubMenu_deny, AdminMenu
g2, (NULL), SystemMenu

NomDuMenu	ROLE_ROOT	ROLE_ADMIN	ROLE_USER
SystemMenu	✅	❌	❌
UserMenu	❌	✅	❌
UserSubMenu_allow	❌	✅	✅
UserSubSubMenu	❌	✅	✅
UserSubMenu_deny	❌	✅	❌
AdminMenu	✅	✅	❌
AdminSubMenu_allow	✅	✅	❌
AdminSubMenu_deny	✅	❌	❌

Use findAccessibleMenus() from MenuService to retrieve all menu items a user can access. To verify access to a specific menu item, call the checkMenuAccess() method. These functions provide efficient menu permission enforcement through jCasbin's access control engine.