[keycloak-user] How to get the role -> permissions for an authenticated user

[Pedro Igor Silva]

There is no way to automatically set the permissions (from a client
authorization settings) when an access token is issued. Like you said, you
need another call to the token endpoint using the uma-grant-type.

However, your web application will make that call only once in order to
exchange the access token with another one with the permissions you need to
access your backend. Your client should also be able to perform incremental
authorization and limit the numbers of permissions within the token.

Using a pure RBAC approach also works for your case, I think. Although you
are limited to RBAC (thus tied with the roles you are using to protect
resources) and not able to use resource-based authorization.

On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 11:23 AM Ori Doolman <Ori.Doolman at cyberark.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a web application (Angular) which calls a REST API in a Java
> microservice.
>
> In my application, which manages books, I have a "regular" and "admin"
> roles.
> "regular" is allowed to execute API readBook.
> "admin" is allowed to execute APIs readBook, deleteBook, createBook.
>
> The mapping between the user roles to the permissions (book:read ,
> book:create, book:delete) is currently in my app DB. I guess I can migrate
> all roles and permissions into Keycloak using the
> resources/permissions/policies entities.
>
> I get an access token in the client (using code flow or implicit flow).
> The token contains the current user roles. But not the permissions.
> When I call my REST API I send the access token to my REST endpoint in the
> http header. The token contains the user roles, but not the user
> permissions. In fact, what I really need is the user permissions for
> checking authorization.
>
>
>
>   1.  What is the best practice of getting the user permissions in my REST
> service? Can I have them become part of the JWT access token when the token
> is created?
> Or is there any other recommended way to "map" the roles into the
> effective permissions at runtime?
> Maybe keep the role->permissions in my current DB and load them to service
> cache ?
>
>   2.  I want to avoid calling Keycloak for every REST API call because
> this will result bad performance. From what I read, if I want to use
> Keycloak authorization services I must call Keycloak for every API request
> and get the permissions (an RPT token). Is that the only way?
>
>
>
>   1.  Another alternative I thought of:
> have 2 user groups "Admins" and "Regulars". For "Admins" I will add roles
> "book:read" , "book:create", "book:delete" and for the "Regulars" group I
> will add only "book:read" role.
> This way, if a user belongs to the admins group, he will have all the
> permissions (roles) in the JWT access token.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Ori.
>
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