openedx-authz 1.13.0

Open edX AuthZ provides the architecture and foundations of the authorization framework.

Open edX AuthZ

Purpose

Open edX AuthZ provides the architecture and foundations of the authorization framework. It implements the core machinery needed to support consistent authorization across the Open edX ecosystem.

This repository centralizes the architecture, design decisions, and reference implementation of a unified model for roles and permissions. It introduces custom roles, flexible scopes, and policy-based evaluation, aiming to replace the fragmented legacy system with a scalable, extensible, and reusable solution.

See the Product Requirements document for Roles & Permissions for detailed specifications and requirements.

Integration with edx-platform

This repository became an edx-platform’s dependency starting with the Ulmo release. From that release onwards, system policies are automatically updated.

If you need to update the policies manually, it is recommended to use the ./manage.py lms load_policies command.

Note

Currently, this package only supports the content libraries’ roles and permissions as documented here, and the migration of data from the old system to the new one is performed automatically.

If you need to migrate the information manually, you should run ./manage.py lms migrate openedx_authz.

Getting Started with Development

Please see the Open edX documentation for guidance on Python development in this repo.

Getting Help

Documentation

See documentation on Read the Docs.

More Help

If you’re having trouble, we have discussion forums at https://discuss.openedx.org where you can connect with others in the community.

Our real-time conversations are on Slack. You can request a Slack invitation, then join our community Slack workspace.

For anything non-trivial, the best path is to open an issue in this repository with as many details about the issue you are facing as you can provide.

https://github.com/openedx/openedx-authz/issues For more information about these options, see the Getting Help page.

License

The code in this repository is licensed under the AGPL 3.0 unless otherwise noted.

Please see LICENSE for details.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome. Please read How To Contribute for details.

This project is currently accepting all types of contributions, bug fixes, security fixes, maintenance work, or new features. However, please make sure to discuss your new feature idea with the maintainers before beginning development to maximize the chances of your change being accepted. You can start a conversation by creating a new issue on this repo summarizing your idea.

The Open edX Code of Conduct

All community members are expected to follow the Open edX Code of Conduct.

People

The assigned maintainers for this component and other project details may be found in Backstage. Backstage pulls this data from the catalog-info.yaml file in this repo.

Reporting Security Issues

Please do not report security issues in public. Please email [e-mail].

Change Log

Unreleased

1.13.0 - 2026-04-22

Added

• Add RoleAssignmentAudit model to record role assignment and removal events, including operation type, subject, role, scope, actor database ID, and timestamp.

• Emit ROLE_ASSIGNMENT_CREATED and ROLE_ASSIGNMENT_DELETED Open edX public signal events via transaction.on_commit after every successful role assignment or removal.

• Add Django admin for RoleAssignmentAudit with filters by operation type and scope type (course, content library), date hierarchy, and search by subject, role, and scope.

1.12.0 - 2026-04-20

Added

• Add automatic course authoring migration mechanism triggered by the authz.enable_course_authoring waffle flag when it is toggled at course or organization scope.

1.11.0 - 2026-04-16

Added

• Add bulk scope support to PUT /api/authz/v1/roles/users/: accept a scopes list field to assign a role across multiple scopes in a single request, while keeping backward compatibility with the existing single scope field.

1.10.0 - 2026-04-16

Added

• Add scopes/ endpoint to list all scopes (courses and libraries), sorted by org, with search and pagination support.

1.9.0 - 2026-04-14

Added

• Add the /api/authz/v1/assignments/ endpoint for listing all user role assignments, to be used in the admin console.

Changed

• Apply view team permissions to the user assignments and team members endpoints.

• Align docstrings and API docs accordingly.

1.8.0 - 2026-04-14

Added

• Add the /api/authz/v1/users/<username>/assignments/ endpoint to get a list of role assignations for a user.

1.7.0 - 2026-04-14

Added

• Add users/validate endpoint for bulk validation of user identifiers (usernames or emails).

1.6.0 - 2026-04-10

Added

• Add users/validate endpoint for bulk validation of user identifiers (usernames or emails).

• Add org-wide support to migration commands for forward and backward migration of course authoring permissions.

1.5.0 - 2026-04-09

Added

• Add users/ endpoint to fetch all team members, with optional filters for orgs, scopes, search by username user full name or email, sorting and pagination.

Fixed

• Fix enforcer is_admin_or_superuser_check that was not taking into account Org glob scopes.

1.4.0 - 2026-04-09

Added

• Add orgs/ endpoint to list and search orgs, with pagination, as required for filters in the Admin Console.

1.3.0 2026-04-08

Added

• Add stub CCX_COACH role/ CCXCourseOverviewData scope to prevent errors when working with CCX courses.

• Add ADR for global scope support for role assignments.

1.2.0 - 2026-03-30

Added

• Add get_user_role_assignments_filtered api function to fetch user role assignments filtered by user, role, and/or scope.

• Add org property to ContentLibraryData and CourseOverviewData.

1.1.0 - 2026-03-17

Added

• Add support for organization global scopes.

1.0.0 - 2026-03-13

Removed

• Dropped support for Python 3.11.

0.23.0 - 2026-02-18

Added

• Add authz_migrate_course_authoring command to migrate legacy CourseAccessRole data to the new Authz (Casbin-based) system

• Add authz_rollback_course_authoring command to rollback Authz roles back to legacy CourseAccessRole

• Support optional –delete flag for controlled cleanup of source permissions after successful migration

• Add migrate_legacy_course_roles_to_authz and migrate_authz_to_legacy_course_roles service functions

• Add unit tests to verify migration and command behavior

Added

• ADR on the AuthZ for Course Authoring Migration Process Details.

0.22.0 - 2026-02-19

• ADR on the AuthZ for Course Authoring implementation plan.

• ADR on the AuthZ for Course Authoring Feature Flag Implementation Details.

• Defined courses roles and permissions mappings, including legacy compatible permissions.

0.21.0 - 2026-02-12

Added

• Add course staff role, permission to manage advanced course settings, and introduce course scope

0.20.0 - 2025-11-27

Added

• Add configurable logging level for Casbin enforcer via CASBIN_LOG_LEVEL setting (defaults to WARNING).

0.19.2 - 2025-11-25

Performance

• Use a RequestCache for is_admin_or_superuser matcher to improve performance.

0.19.1 - 2025-11-25

Fixed

• Use short_name instead of name from organization when building library key.

0.19.0 - 2025-11-18

Added

• Handle cache invalidation via a uuid in the database to ensure policy reloads occur only when necessary.

0.18.0 - 2025-11-17

Added

• Migration to transfer legacy permissions from ContentLibraryPermission to the new Casbin-based authorization model.

0.17.1 - 2025-11-14

Fixed

• Avoid circular import of AuthzEnforcer.

0.17.0 - 2025-11-14

Added

• Signal to clear policies associated to a user when they are retired.

0.16.0 - 2025-11-13

Changed

• BREAKING: Update permission format to include app namespace prefix.

Added

• Register CasbinRule model in the Django admin.

• Register ExtendedCasbinRule model in the Django admin as an inline model of CasbinRule.

0.15.0 - 2025-11-11

Added

• ExtendedCasbinRule model to extend the base CasbinRule model for additional metadata, and cascade delete support.

0.14.0 - 2025-11-11

Added

• Implement custom matcher to check for staff and superuser status.

0.13.1 - 2025-11-11

Fixed

• Avoid duplicates when getting scopes for given user and permissions.

0.13.0 - 2025-11-05

Added

• Add support for global scopes instead of generic sc scope to support instance-level permissions.

0.12.0 - 2025-10-30

Changed

• Load authorization policies in permission class.

0.11.2 - 2025-10-30

Added

• Consider Content Library V2 toggle only in CMS service variant.

0.11.1 - 2025-10-29

Changed

• Refactor to get permissions’ scopes instead of role.

Fixed

• Use correct content library toggle to check if Content Library V2 is enabled.

0.11.0 - 2025-10-29

Added

• Disable auto-save and auto-load of policies if Content Library V2 is disabled.

0.10.1 - 2025-10-28

Fixed

• Fix constants and test class to be able to use it outside this app.

0.10.0 - 2025-10-28

Added

• New get_object() method in ScopeData to retrieve underlying domain objects

• Implementation of get_object() for ContentLibraryData with canonical key validation

Changed

• Refactor ContentLibraryData.exists() to use get_object() internally

0.9.1 - 2025-10-28

Fixed

• Fix role user count to accurately filter users assigned to roles within specific scopes instead of across all scopes.

0.9.0 - 2025-10-27

Added

• Function API to retrieve scopes for a given role and subject.

0.8.0 - 2025-10-24

Added

• Allow disabling auto-load and auto-save of policies by setting CASBIN_AUTO_LOAD_POLICY_INTERVAL to -1.

Changed

• Migrate from using pycodestyle and isort to ruff for code quality checks and formatting.

• Enhance enforcement command with dual operational modes (database and file mode).

0.7.0 - 2025-10-23

Added

• Initial migration to establish dependency on casbin_adapter for automatic CasbinRule table creation.

0.6.0 - 2025-10-22

Changed

• Use a SyncedEnforcer with default auto load policy.

Removed

• Remove Casbin Redis watcher from engine configuration.

0.5.0 - 2025-10-21

Added

• Default policy for Content Library roles and permissions.

Fixed

• Add plugin_settings in test settings.

• Update permissions for RoleListView.

0.4.1 - 2025-10-16

Fixed

• Load policy before adding policies in the loading script to avoid duplicates.

0.4.0 - 2025-16-10

Changed

• Initialize enforcer when application is ready to avoid access errors.

0.3.0 - 2025-10-10

Added

• Implementation of REST API for roles and permissions management.

0.2.0 - 2025-10-10

Added

• ADRs for key design decisions.

• Casbin model (CONF) and engine layer for authorization.

• Implementation of public API for roles and permissions management.

0.1.0 - 2025-08-27

Added

• Basic repo structure and initial setup.