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Change 'read' permission filter on search results?

jrippon

Our publishing department will use Alfresco to manage documents. We would like to make some of these documents available to other employees using a custom web interface and web scripts. We want the employees to have access to only metadata on certain documents (for when publishing wants full control of printing and distribution). This will allow them to see if they have the latest version on file, find out when the document will be mailed, find the document ID etc. without being able to download an electronic copy.

So I made a custom permission group called "Viewer" that has ReadProperties and ReadChildren permission (but not ReadContent). In the web interface it works fine, the user can see the document properties but cannot download the document.

However, the documents do not show up in search results. According to http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Search:

The rows returned in the result sets from the SearchService are filtered to contain only the nodes to which the user executing the search has read access.

This makes sense as in most cases you wouldn't want a user to determine document contents by searching. Our situation is unique in that we want to allow users to search and find documents that they have access to in physical form but not in the Alfresco repository.

I looked through the code to find where this filtering happens and didn't see anything obvious, but I am quite new to Alfresco and much of the code is beyond me.

How involved would making a change to filter on ReadProperties (as opposed to ReadContent) be? Or am I approaching this problem from the wrong direction? We could for example forget the "Viewer" role and filter result links in our custom web interface. I just worry about users end-running the filter (through CIFS or the Alfresco UI) to get at documents they shouldn't be able to download. Another option would be to upload dummy documents with the metadata we want users to see, but this seems inelegant and adds maintenance overhead in addition to reducing search effectiveness.

Any advice is appreciated!

Josh

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Comments

zaizi

Hi,

The configuration file you want is tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/public-services-security-context.xml. You find brief info on it on the wiki at http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Security_Services.

The big of code that would be of interest to you is following. Try changing it to ReadProperties for query. There are examples within that file. Info on how to add custom configuration is at http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Permissions_and_Roles_Configuration.

<bean id="SearchService_security" class="net.sf.acegisecurity.intercept.method.aopalliance.MethodSecurityInterceptor">
        <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
        <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref local="accessDecisionManager"/></property>
        <property name="afterInvocationManager"><ref local="afterInvocationManager"/></property>
        <property name="objectDefinitionSource">
            <value>
                org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.query=AFTER_ACL_NODE.sys:base.Read
                org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.selectNodes=AFTER_ACL_NODE.sys:base.Read
                org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.selectProperties=ACL_NODE.0.sys:base.Read
                org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.contains=ACL_NODE.0.sys:base.Read
                org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.like=ACL_NODE.0.sys:base.Read
            </value>
        </property>
    </bean>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Hope that helps. Let us know how you get on.

Ainga

jrippon

Ainga,

That is exactly what I was looking for! I changed it to ReadProperties for query and results started showing up in searches. Thanks a million!

Josh

koenv

Hey,

I have writen a search call (AMP deployment) like described on Wiki. (example see below)
The query run succesfully. Problem is that all result show up … without any permission restriction.

Any idea why all user can see results of the whole repository?
Have I check permissions manually for every retreived node?

grtz,
Koen

        SearchParameters sp = new SearchParameters();
        sp.addStore(getStoreRef());
        sp.setLanguage(SearchService.LANGUAGE_LUCENE);
        sp.setQuery("TEXT:\"fox\");
        ResultSet results = null;
        try
        {
            results = serviceRegistry.getSearchService().query(sp);
            for(ResultSetRow row : results)
            {
                NodeRef currentNodeRef = row.getNodeRef();
                …
            }
        }
        finally
        {
            if(results != null)
            {
                results.close();
            }
        }

alfros

Hi,

we've got a very similar problem as Josh.

Assume that we have a hierachical folder structure, like:
/Chairman
***/Department A
******/Sub-Department I
******/Sub-Department II
***/Department B

Chairman usergroup should have ReadProperties and ReadChildren on Chairman and all of its subfolders (as ReadChildren seems a must-have together with ReadProperties, strictly speaking I only wont the group memebers the access the folders metadata). Department A group should have ReadProperties and ReadChildren permissions on their own folder and all of its subfolders.

The solve this task we wrote a new permission group:

     <permissionGroup name="VibsRead"  expose="true" allowFullControl="false">
           <includePermissionGroup type="sys:base" permissionGroup="ReadProperties"/>
           <includePermissionGroup type="sys:base" permissionGroup="ReadChildren"/>
      </permissionGroup>‍‍‍‍

As with the predefinied role Consumer, we then defined a role called VibsConsumer and granted this right to Chairman group on their folder, to Department A group on their folder and so on. Permission inheritance switched on on all levels. (But there is no single permission granted above the Chairman folder.)

With this settings only I'm not able to see any folder of the hierachy, when logging in as a Chairman user. The search function doesn't show any folder of the hierachy as well. I then found this thread and changed the public-services-security-context.xml. The file seems to have changed from your version 1,5 years ago and version 3.2r. I tried to change org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.query=ACL_ALLOW,AFTER_ACL_NODE.sys:base.Read to org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.query=ACL_ALLOW,AFTER_ACL_NODE.sys:base.ReadProperties but that didn't change anything. For test purposes I then commented all values out except of org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.*=ACL_ALLOW. But even this rigid change didn't improve the situation. Chairman group users can't find any folder of the hierarchy using the search function or the usual web-interface.

Does anyone have an idea how to solve this problem?

As mentioned before, the ultimate goal is that all departments can read folder-metadata of their own folder and all the sub-folders, but nothing else (reading content, write, …) by default.

Regards,
Matt

jrippon

Matt,

That is the same permission definition we are using in production, now Alfresco Enterprise 3.1 SP1. The only change we made in public-services-security-context.xml was

org.alfresco.service.cmr.search.SearchService.query=AFTER_ACL_NODE.sys:base.ReadProperties

Even before this change users were able to browse items and view metadata in the web interface, the problem was if they searched for something it would not show in the results.

Have you added the "VibsRead" permission group as a content and folder specific role? See permissionDefinitions.xml under "Permissions specific to content" heading.

Ours is configured like this:

   <permissionSet type="cm:content" expose="selected">

      <!– Content specific roles.                                                       –>
      
      <permissionGroup name="Coordinator" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Collaborator" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Contributor" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Editor" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Consumer" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Viewer" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Provider" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="RecordAdministrator" extends="true" expose="false"/>
      
   </permissionSet>
    
    
    <permissionSet type="cm:folder" expose="selected">

      <!– Content folder specific roles.                                                       –>
      
      <permissionGroup name="Coordinator" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Collaborator" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Contributor" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Editor" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Consumer" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Viewer" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="Provider" extends="true" expose="true"/>
      <permissionGroup name="RecordAdministrator" extends="true" expose="false"/>
      
   </permissionSet>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

"Viewer" is configured exactly as "VibsRead".

      <!– The Viewer permission allows read to node properties only.     –>
      <permissionGroup name="Viewer" allowFullControl="false" expose="true" >
          <includePermissionGroup type="sys:base" permissionGroup="ReadProperties"/>
          <includePermissionGroup type="sys:base" permissionGroup="ReadChildren"/>
      </permissionGroup>‍‍‍‍‍

HTH,
Josh

p_bodnar

Hi, if anyone is interested, you can see my update on this topic at this (a little bit duplicate) thread: