policy_wonk

PolicyWonk is a lightweight authorization and resource loading library for any Plug or Phoenix application. Authorization (Auth-Z) is the process of deciding what a user/entity is allowed to do after they’ve been authenticated.

Setup

Add policy_wonk to the deps section of your application's mix.exs file

defp deps do
  [
    # ...
    {:policy_wonk, "~> 0.1"}
    # ...
  ]
end

Don't forget to run mix deps.get

Plugs

PolicyWonk provides three main plugs.

• PolicyWonk.LoadResource loads resources into the conn's assigns map.
• PolicyWonk.Enforce evaluates a specified policy. It either continues or halts the plug chain depending on the policy result.
• PolicyWonk.EnforceAction evaluates a policy for each incoming controller action in Phoenix.

Decisions are made before controller actions are called, isolating authorization logic, encouraging policy re-use, and reducing the odds of messing Auth-Z up as you develop your controllers.

In a router:

  pipeline :browser_session do
    plug PolicyWonk.LoadResource, :current_user
    plug PolicyWonk.Enforce, :current_user
  end
  
  pipeline :admin do
    plug PolicyWonk.Enforce, {:user_permission, "admin"}
  end

In a controller:

  plug PolicyWonk.Enforce, {:user_permission, "admin_content"}
  plug PolicyWonk.EnforceAction

Tutorial

You can read a full tutorial on setting up and using policy wonk here.

Documentation

You can read the full documentation here.