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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:

...

# 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 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> .

...

<><#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>

...