[Cubicweb] security context

[Christophe de Vienne]

Hi everyone,

At the last copil, I brought the idea of add a new notion of "security
context", associated with a connection.

This security context would be a dictionary in which keys could be used
in permissions rql expressions.

Such a context would be very useful to check permissions against
arbitrary informations orthogonal to the current user. For example, a
token that gives access to a specific resource could be used to share a
private resource via a simple url including this token.

Once such a system works, the current user (_cw.user) and its security
related attributes (groups) could be transfered to this context, making
cnx.user useless and less a problem than it is today [1].

Another big advantage would be that it would be easier to have an
external system providing security informations without hacking around
the user, connection and session [2]. One could even have permissions
checking without a single CWUser in the database.

I will start working on that idea soon, but before diving into the code
I would like to hints about what parts of cubicweb do the permissions
checking with rql expressions and the current user.

Feedback on the idea are also welcome.

Christophe

[1] The fact that an entity, _cw.user, survives all the cnx.clear()
    calls is a problem in some cases (see
https://lists.cubicweb.org/pipermail/cubicweb/2015-January/002255.html).

[2] I am of course thinking of pyramid_cubicweb, in which this security
    context could be filled by the 'principals'
(http://docs.pylonsproject.org/docs/pyramid/en/latest/glossary.html#term-principal)

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