7 posts tagged with "casbin"

If your deployment environment doesn't support a service mesh like Envoy or an external authorization server (common in simpler, monolithic, or traditional hosting setups), you can certainly move the Casbin authorization check into your Flask application using middleware or decorators.

This approach centralizes authorization logic within the Python code, relying on dedicated extensions like flask-authz or Flask-Casbin.

Using SQLite as the database adapter for Casbin policy storage is the ideal solution for local development, unit testing, and small-scale applications due to its lightweight, file-based nature.

In the Python Casbin ecosystem, this is achieved using the casbin-sqlalchemy-adapter, as SQLAlchemy natively supports SQLite without needing separate driver installations [2].

The fundamental way to integrate Firestore as the policy storage for Casbin is by using a dedicated Adapter. In Casbin, an adapter serves as the persistent layer, handling the LoadPolicy() and SavePolicy() operations between the in-memory enforcer and the database.

1. The Casbin Sidecar Pattern​

A sidecar is a helper container that runs alongside your main application container (the Flask app) inside the same Kubernetes Pod [4]. The sidecar, in this case, is the Envoy Proxy, which intercepts all incoming and outgoing traffic for your Flask application.

Centralized Authorization on GCP: Casbin, Envoy, and API Gateway​

Implementing authorization within a web application, especially in a microservices environment, can quickly lead to duplicated or inconsistent security logic. By leveraging the External Authorization Pattern using Envoy Proxy and Casbin, you can decouple security checks from your Flask application, making your architecture cleaner, more secure, and scalable.

This strategy is particularly effective on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) when using services like API Gateway or Cloud Endpoints as the entry point, and Firestore as the persistent policy backend.

A common misconception about using Casbin Hierarchical RBAC is that the entire policy storage must be updated every time a user performs an action or changes state. This is incorrect. The system is designed to separate the static, structural hierarchy (which rarely changes) from the dynamic user assignments (which change frequently).

The efficiency of Hierarchical RBAC lies in this separation, minimizing the required policy updates and reducing redundancy.

The choice between standard Casbin RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) and Casbin RBAC with Hierarchical Roles largely depends on the complexity of your application's user structure and the need for role inheritance.

Both models use a similar policy structure in Casbin's configuration files (models and policies), but the hierarchical model provides a powerful shortcut for managing permissions in complex organizations.