Distributed Authorization Reference

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This guide serves as a detailed configuration reference. For a more general overview, see the guide on filtering lists with decentralized data.

Distributed Check API

The distributed check API allows you to perform authorization using data that's distributed across Oso Cloud and your own database.

The methods are documented under the appropriate Client SDK:

Configuration

The distributed check API requires a YAML file to configure how Oso looks for authorization data in your database. This configuration generally looks like:


# One entry per fact signature in your database
facts:
  # Ex:
  # has_relation(Issue:_, parent, Repository:_):
  <predicate> ([<type>:]{_, <id>} )*:
    # Ex:
    # query: SELECT id, repository FROM issues
    query: <sql_query>
# Optional map of resource <type>s to their data type in your application database
sql_types:
  # Ex:
  # Issue: UUID
  <type>: <sql_data_type>

In describing each of these sections, we'll mention various restrictions on each. You can validate that your data bindings don't violate any of these with the oso-cloud CLI

`facts`

The facts section is required and is where the majority of your configuration logic lives. It consists of one key for each fact signature stored in your database. Fact signatures are specified with a predicate (e.g. has_role, has_relation etc.) followed by a parenthesized list of common separated arguments (e.g. User:_, String:admin etc.).

Each fact signature must have a query value, which specifies the sql query that will be used to look up facts matching this signature.

The _ symbol in a fact signature indicates that the <id> of the entity is a variable returned by the query. For example, the signature


has_relation(Issue:_, String:parent, Repository:_):

says: "this sql query returns one row for every Issue that has a parent Repository".

The query value for a signature must return the same number of columns as there are wildcards in the signature. This means that for the signature above, this


SELECT issue.id, 'parent', issue.parent_repo
FROM issue

is invalid. A valid query would be


SELECT issue.id, issue.parent_repo
FROM issue

Additional Restrictions

Fact signatures must correspond to rules in your policy (they wouldn't do much if they didn't).

Fact signatures also must not "overlap", meaning they must all be mutually exclusive. Consider this example:


facts:
  is_protected (Repository:_, Boolean:true):
    query: |-
      select id
      from repository
      where is_protected
  is_protected (Repository:_, Boolean:false):
    query: |-
      select id
      from repository
      where !is_protected

These facts don't overlap, so this is valid! On the other hand:


facts:
  is_protected (Repository:_, Boolean:_):
    query: |-
      select id, is_protected
      from repository
  is_protected (Repository:_, Boolean:false):
    query: |-
      select id
      from repository
      where !is_protected

These facts do overlap. Slightly more formally the set of facts matching the signature is_protected (Repository:_, Boolean:_) contains the set of facts matching the signature is_protected (Repository:_, Boolean:false).

Additionally each query must be a SELECT statement (Technically a <query specification> per SQl-92 (opens in a new tab)). Common table expressions (CTEs), subqueries, and set expressions like UNION are allowed, but each of these must also be a SELECT. The following is not valid, because the CTE is an UPDATE statement:


WITH inserted as (
    update issue
    set parent_repo = 1
    returning id, parent_repo
)
SELECT id, parent_repo
FROM inserted

`sql_types`

The sql_types section is optional, but strongly recommended. It maps resources in Oso Cloud (e.g. Issue, Repository) to their data types in your application database. This allows authorization queries returned by the distributed check API to more effectively use indexes, improving query performance.

Example


facts:
  has_relation(Issue:_, parent, Repository:_):
    query: SELECT id, repository FROM issues
sql_types:
  Issue: UUID
  Repository: UUID

This example tells Oso that has_relation facts that associate issues with their parent repositories are resolved by running a query (SELECT id, repository FROM issues) against your application's database, rather than by looking them up directly in Oso Cloud.

For more information, see the guide on filtering lists with decentralized data.

For a comprehensive example, check out our Ruby on Rails sample app (opens in a new tab)

Glossary