Using the AuthzGroup Service

Information

This explains basic usage of the Sakai AuthzGroup Service. This service is used to find out things about Authz (permission) groups and the users who have those permissions.

• Trunk javadocs:
  • AuthzGroupService : http://nightly2.sakaiproject.org/javadoc/org/sakaiproject/authz/api/AuthzGroupService.html
  • AuthzGroup: http://nightly2.sakaiproject.org/javadoc/org/sakaiproject/authz/api/AuthzGroup.html
• Trunk source location: https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/authz/trunk/

Accessing the AuthzGroupService

• You can use Spring Framework to inject the service or use the cover

1. Using Spring to get the service for your class (e.g. YourAppClass) (recommended)
   1. Add the AuthzGroupService bean to the bean for YourAppClass

      <bean id="org.sakaiproject.yourapp.logic.YourAppClass"
      		class="org.sakaiproject.yourapp.logic.impl.YourAppClassImpl">
      	<property name="authzGroupService"
      		ref="org.sakaiproject.authz.api.AuthzGroupService" />
      </bean>
      

   2. Add a variable and setter to YourAppClass to use the service in like so:

      private AuthzGroupService authzGroupService;
      public void setAuthzGroupService(AuthzGroupService authzGroupService) {
      	this.authzGroupService = authzGroupService;
      }
      

2. Using the cover to get the service
   • Note: This is not the recommended method, you should be using Spring to inject the service
   1. Setup a variable to hold the instance from the cover

      private AuthzGroupService authzGroupService;
      

   2. Get access to the service using the cover

      authzGroupService = org.sakaiproject.authz.cover.AuthzGroupService.getInstance();
      

Getting the users associated with a site which have a specific permission

• Use this to tie data to a specific use of a tool in an area (probably a site or a section)

1. Use the ToolManager service to get the current context

   String currentContext = toolManager.getCurrentPlacement().getContext();
   

   • Note: You could also retrieve the context in other ways, this is just the common one
2. Use the SiteService to get the site reference from the context

   String siteRef = siteService.siteReference(context);
   

   • Note: This could also be a group reference instead of a site reference (in theory)
3. Create a Collection of the references and pass that to the AuthzGroupService to get the Set of userIds

   java.util.List azGroups = new java.util.ArrayList();
   azGroups.add(siteRef);
   java.util.Set userIds = authzGroupService.getUsersIsAllowed("tool.permission", azGroups);
   

   • Note: In this case, tool.permission is the permission you registered earlier with the FunctionManager