In WebAC, an Authorization is a rule that describes who can access what, and how they can interact with the resource they can access. An Authorization is written as a series of RDF triples, with the Authorization resource as the subject for each of these triples. The Authorization resource URI is a hash URI, because of the requirement for potentially multiple, distinct Authorizations to be included in a single ACL resource. In this document, the subject <#authz> is used in the examples.

Prefixes used in this document:

@prefix acl:   <http://www.w3.org/ns/auth/acl#> .
@prefix ex:    <http://example.org/ns#> .
@prefix foaf:  <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix ldp:   <http://www.w3.org/ns/ldp#> .
@prefix pcdm:  <http://pcdm.org/models#> .
@prefix vcard: <http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#> .
@prefix webac: <http://fedora.info/definitions/v4/webac#> .

"Who?" - Users and Groups

The first part of the authorization describes who can access a resource. There are two ways to do this. The first is simply by naming particular users using the acl:agent property, as either strings or URIs. When using URIs, it is necessary to translate the string-based username that is used for container-based authentication (i.e. Tomcat/Jetty authentication) into a URI. This is done by prefixing the string with a URI that is set in the container configuration: -Dfcrepo.auth.webac.userAgent.baseUri=http://example.org/user/ and/or -Dfcrepo.auth.webac.groupAgent.baseUri=http://example.org/group/

# as strings
<#authz> acl:agent "obiwan", "yoda" .
 
# as URI references
<#authz> acl:agent ex:obiwan, ex:yoda .

However, listing individual users this way can get unwieldy, so you can also use the acl:agentGroup property to specify a group of users:

<#authz> acl:agentGroup </groups/jedi> .

The object of the acl:agentGroup property must be a URI to a group resource (of type vcard:Group) containing a list of its members:

# contents of </groups/jedi>, using strings to identify members:
<> a vcard:Group;
    vcard:hasMember "obiwan";
    vcard:hasMember "yoda";
    vcard:hasMember "luke" .
 
# contents of </groups/jedi>, using URIs to identify members:
<> a vcard:Group;
    vcard:hasMember ex:obiwan;
    vcard:hasMember ex:yoda;
    vcard:hasMember ex:luke .

"What?" - Resources and Resource Types

The next part of the authorization describes what resource can be accessed. As with the previous section on agents, there are also two ways to describe the resource. The first is to provide the URI to the resource using the acl:accessTo property:

<#authz> acl:accessTo </collections/rebels/plans> .

If you use acl:accessTo to protect a container, and add an acl:default predicate, that authorization rule by default will also apply to any of that container's children, unless that child has its own ACL.

<#authz> acl:accessTo </collections/rebels> ;
    acl:default </collections/rebels> .

The second is to use the acl:accessToClass property to state that the authorization rule applies to any resource with the named RDF type. For example, this authorization will apply to any pcdm:Container resources contained by /collections/rebels that do not have their own ACL:

<#authz> acl:accessToClass pcdm:Container ;
    acl:default </collections/rebels>

"How?" - Modes of Interaction

Finally, an authorization states how the users or groups can interact with the resource or type of resource. This is known as the mode of access, and is specified using the acl:mode property.