Resources and Actions

Resource is a generic interface for modelling resources, like, for instance, UI assets: perspectives, screens or editors or even backend resources like repositories, projects, data objects, etc... Every Resource has a dependency to a ResourceType that acts as a resource classifier.

For instance, in Uberfire there exist the ActivityResourceType interface which defines the following types: PERSPECTIVE, SCREEN, EDITOR, SPLASH & POPUP.

There is also the ResourceAction interface which defines what actions can be aplied over a resource. The READ action is common to all the resource types and it basically defines the ability to reach, access or view a resource. For instance, read a file, view an item in the UI, etc.

The AuthorizationManager provides specific methods for checking actions against the different resource types. For example:

To check the READ action on any Resource instance:

boolean result = authzManager.authorize(perspective1, ResourceAction.READ, user);

The following diagram shows the AuthorizationManager and its related interfaces:

In Uberfire, the class model for perspectives, screens, etc, supports the Resource interface. During application development it is possible to bring new classes under authorization management control by following the same approach. Basically:

• To make the resource class to implement the Resource interface
• To provide an extended ResourceAction interface listing the available actions

See the section Extensibility to figure out the details.