pryvacy 0.1.1

A set of access control descriptors for methods and nested classes

pryvacy - a set of access control decorators for python

Philosophy

• Incur as least overhead as possible when using the access control decorators
• Only classes that use the decorators need to be changed, other related classes do not need to -> Can be opted-in easily

Installation

pip install pryvacy

Usage

The package provides 3 access control decorators: @private, @public, @protected that can be used on methods and nested classes (currently only @private can be used on nested classes)

from pryvacy import pryvacy, private, public, protected

@pryvacy
class Foo():
  @public
  def public_method(self):
    pass

  @protected
  def protected_method(self):
    pass

  @privaye
  def private_method(self):
    pass

Access control rules:

• Methods inside Foo are able to access public_method, protected_method, private_method.
• Code outside Foo and not inside any Foo's subclass methods can only access public_method.
• Methods inside Foo's subclasses (either decorated with @pryvacy or not) can access public_method and protected_method.
• Nested classes methods can access public_method, protected_method, private_method.

Pitfalls & Bugs

Disclaimer: The package has not been tested thoroughly! Use with caution! Any contributions are appreciated~

Currently, class-level code cannot access protected_method and private_method.

Example:

  class Foo():
    ...
    class Bar(Foo):
      Foo().public_method() # OK!
      Foo().protected_method() # Exception!
      Foo().private_method() # Exception!

Current limitations

• @private and @protected are not supported on nested classes yet.

• No way to enforce access policy on class and instance attributes.

Roadmap

• Benchmark decorated classes

• Test comprehensively the decorators interaction with the whole ecosystem

• Implement @private and @protected on nested classes