pycarta 0.3.3

Python interface to Carta.

Summary

The goal behind pycarta is to simplify administrative actions, such as assigning user permission, creating groups, and registering services, requiring authentication, setting up and calling Carta services.

Many projects restrict who has access to information or analyses. pycarta makes enforcing those access controls simple and painless. While pycarta has many other uses, one of the most important allows you, the developer, to control who has permission to execute your code using the @pycarta.authorize decorator.

import pycarta

@pycarta.authorize(groups=["MyOrg:MyGroup"])
def my_function(*args, **kwds):
    # Code you want to protect.
    pass

Anyone not authorized to run my_function will receive an AuthenticationError. Other functions, such as those defined in administrative_tasks{.interpreted-text role="ref"} can be used to setup who ultimately falls within these permissions.

Definitions

Throughout, this documentation will refer to a number of Carta-specific concepts and, while every effort has been made to remain true to the prima facia meaning of terms, there are some nuances that may be important in certain circumstances.

Group

One or more users may form a group. This is particularly useful for
assigning permissions to various Carta resources.

Resource

Carta resources include authentication, projects, secrets, and
services. Some, specifically projects and services, can be shared
using the Carta permission system. Others (authentication and
secrets) are specific to the user and cannot be shared.

Permissions

As with other permission systems, Carta Permisions allows owners to
share access to resources with other users, with groups, and even
with other resources based on the users\' roles. Each resource will
have exactly one owner, but other users may be granted admin, read,
write, execute, and clone permissions. An *admin*, like the owner,
may grant or rescind permission to anyone (except the owner). *read*
and *write* permissions have their obvious meaning. *execute*
permissions, which is particularly relevant to services, determine
whether a user can make a call to (execute) the action accessible
through the service API. Finally, *clone* permissions allow select
resources to be duplicated, similar to forking a repository.

Project

Projects are the basic unit of organization in Carta. While not
required, projects generally correlate to an organization.

Secrets

Carta provides a secure method for temporarily storing small
secrets, such as usernames, passwords, tokens, etc. and are useful
for accessing third-party resources. Because of their sensitive
nature, secrets may not be shared between users.

Service

A central function for Carta is to act as a proxy that abstracts
away the details of a backend, third-party resource. Services are
APIs exposed and authenticated through Carta. These are scoped with
a `namespace`, which must be unique across the Carta platform, and a
`service`, the name of the service. The functionality of the service
is exposed through
`https://carta.contextualize.us.com/<namespace>/<service>/{endpoints}`.

User

A user is someone who has registered an account with Carta.

Feature Request/Bug-Fix

For login issues, please contact [e-mail].

To request a new feature or to report a bug, please email pycarta. Please be sure to describe the goal of the new feature or, for a bug report, a minimum code that reproduces the error. Note that if you submit a feature request or bug report, the developers reserve the right to contact you about that request.