Introduction

The summary below is a very basic idea of where I want this to go. Over the next few days, as I explore the Django source code in more depth I will be expanding upon what is written here, and making changes.

What are Row Level Permissions?

An example of row level permissions would be: "User A has read-access to article 234" or "User D has read, write access to article 234".

Why do we need this?

An example of where this would be useful is a forum or message board. With the current permission system, a user is capable of editing all the posts or unable to edit any posts. After implementing a row level permission, it can be modified so a user is capable of editing only their own personal posts.

Implementation

The priority of permissions would work: User/Group Object Type Permissions -> User/Group Row Level Permission. Meaning it would check each of those permissions in order to determine if the user has the correct permissions to do the activity they wish to do.

The method I am considering would use a seperate table to contain the row level permissions. Within that table would be the object id, user/group id, permissions (e.g. read, write, delete, etc.). There will most likely be a seperate table for each object type.

A reason for doing it this way, is that it allows a many-to-many relationship between instances of objects and users/groups. Therefore, one or more users/groups can have different permissions on the same object. Another reason, is that it will not affect the current columns within the object's table.

By default, these permissions will be disabled, but the developer will be able to enable the row level permissions using the meta attribute for each type of object.

The row level permissions will allow custom permissions.

The row level permissions can be modified using an API or by the administration interface.

Another possible method of doing this would be a similiar method to the current unix permissions. This method is not as flexible as the above method, and will most likely modify the object's table directly which might cause problems.

Deliverables

• Modified administration interface that will allow users to modify row level permissions
• API to allow developers to modify the row level permissions
• Ability of developer to enable or disable row level permissions
• Changes to the generated SQL that will create the row level permission table
• Tests for all the above

Contact

Please contact me (indirecthit at gmail.com) or modify this page with any comments you have on what I have written above.