AIDA Permissions

A flexible and powerful Django roles and permissions extension optimized for Django REST Framework and Vue.js frontends.

Features

• 🔐 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with inheritance support
• 🏢 Multi-tenancy ready with tenant isolation
• ⚡ Optimized for REST APIs with Django REST Framework integration
• 🎯 Vue.js components for frontend integration
• 🔄 Dynamic permissions that can be created and assigned at runtime
• ⏰ Time-based permissions with expiration support
• 🎨 Admin interface for easy management
• 🚀 High performance with intelligent caching
• 📝 Comprehensive audit logging

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Django 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 5.0, or 5.1
• Django REST Framework 3.12+

Custom User Model Support

AIDA Permissions fully supports custom Django User models, including:

• Models using email as the primary identifier (USERNAME_FIELD = 'email')
• Models without a username field
• Models with custom authentication fields

The extension automatically adapts to your User model configuration without requiring any additional setup.

Installation

Install using pip:

pip install aida-permissions

Add to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'aida_permissions',
    'rest_framework',
    # ...
]

Add the middleware (optional but recommended):

MIDDLEWARE = [
    # ...
    'aida_permissions.middleware.PermissionMiddleware',
    # ...
]

Run migrations:

python manage.py migrate aida_permissions

Initialize default permissions:

python manage.py init_permissions

Quick Start

1. Define Roles and Permissions

from aida_permissions.models import Role, Permission, PermissionCategory

# Create a permission category
category = PermissionCategory.objects.create(
    name="products",
    display_name="Product Management"
)

# Create permissions
view_permission = Permission.objects.create(
    codename="products.view",
    name="View Products",
    category=category
)

edit_permission = Permission.objects.create(
    codename="products.edit",
    name="Edit Products",
    category=category
)

# Create a role
manager_role = Role.objects.create(
    name="product_manager",
    display_name="Product Manager"
)

# Assign permissions to role
manager_role.add_permission(view_permission)
manager_role.add_permission(edit_permission)

2. Assign Roles to Users

from aida_permissions.models import UserRole
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model

User = get_user_model()

# Works with any User model configuration
# For username-based models:
user = User.objects.get(username="john")
# For email-based models:
# user = User.objects.get(email="john@example.com")

# Assign role to user
UserRole.objects.create(
    user=user,
    role=manager_role
)

3. Check Permissions in Views

from rest_framework import viewsets
from aida_permissions.permissions import AidaPermission

class ProductViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    permission_classes = [AidaPermission]
    
    # Define required permissions for each action
    permission_required = {
        'list': 'products.view',
        'retrieve': 'products.view',
        'create': 'products.create',
        'update': 'products.edit',
        'destroy': 'products.delete',
    }

4. Check Permissions in Code

from aida_permissions.utils import has_permission

if has_permission(user, 'products.edit'):
    # User can edit products
    product.save()

5. Use in Templates (Vue.js)

<template>
  <div>
    <button v-if="can('products.edit')" @click="editProduct">
      Edit Product
    </button>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
import { usePermissions } from '@/composables/usePermissions'

export default {
  setup() {
    const { can } = usePermissions()
    return { can }
  }
}
</script>

Advanced Features

Role Inheritance

# Create parent role
base_role = Role.objects.create(
    name="employee",
    display_name="Employee"
)

# Create child role that inherits permissions
manager_role = Role.objects.create(
    name="manager",
    display_name="Manager",
    parent_role=base_role  # Inherits all employee permissions
)

Time-based Permissions

from datetime import timedelta
from django.utils import timezone

# Assign role with expiration
UserRole.objects.create(
    user=user,
    role=temp_role,
    expires_at=timezone.now() + timedelta(days=30)
)

Multi-tenancy Support

# Create tenant-specific role
role = Role.objects.create(
    name="tenant_admin",
    display_name="Tenant Admin",
    tenant_id=tenant.id
)

# Check permission with tenant context
from aida_permissions.utils import PermissionChecker

checker = PermissionChecker(user, tenant_id=tenant.id)
if checker.has_permission('products.edit'):
    # User can edit products in this tenant
    pass

Custom Permission Conditions

# Add permission with conditions
role.add_permission(
    permission,
    conditions={
        'department': 'sales',
        'region': 'north'
    }
)

API Endpoints

The package provides ready-to-use API endpoints:

• GET /api/permissions/ - List permissions
• GET /api/roles/ - List roles
• POST /api/roles/{id}/assign_permissions/ - Assign permissions to role
• GET /api/user-permissions/check/ - Check current user permissions
• POST /api/user-roles/assign/ - Assign role to user

Management Commands

# Initialize default permissions
python manage.py init_permissions

# Audit permissions usage
python manage.py audit_permissions

# Clean expired permissions
python manage.py cleanup_expired_permissions

Configuration

Add to your Django settings:

# Optional: Custom user model
AUTH_USER_MODEL = 'myapp.User'

# Optional: Caching backend for better performance
CACHES = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.redis.RedisCache',
        'LOCATION': 'redis://127.0.0.1:6379/1',
    }
}

# Optional: Default role for new users
AIDA_DEFAULT_ROLE = 'member'

# Optional: Permission check failure behavior
AIDA_PERMISSION_DENIED_RAISES = True

Testing

Run the test suite:

pytest

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see our Contributing Guide for details.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Support

• Documentation: https://github.com/hmesfin/aida-permissions
• Issues: https://github.com/hmesfin/aida-permissions/issues

Author

• GitHub: @hmesfin

Acknowledgments

• Built with Django and Django REST Framework
• Inspired by django-guardian and django-role-permissions