Checking for Permission in JSPs

Implementing Permissions

Step 4 of 4

You’ve already seen how user interface components can be wrapped in permission checks pretty easily. In this step, you’ll implement the rest.

Checking Permissions in the UI

Recall that you want to restrict access to three areas in your application:

• The guestbook tabs across the top of your application
• The Add Guestbook button
• The Add Entry button

First, you’ll create the guestbook tabs and check permissions for them:

1. Open /guestbookwebportlet/view.jsp and find the scriptlet that gets the guestbookId from the request. Just below this, add the following code:

   <aui:nav cssClass="nav-tabs">
   
       <%
           List<Guestbook> guestbooks = GuestbookLocalServiceUtil.getGuestbooks(scopeGroupId);
   
               for (int i = 0; i < guestbooks.size(); i++) {
   
                   Guestbook curGuestbook = guestbooks.get(i);
                   String cssClass = StringPool.BLANK;
   
                   if (curGuestbook.getGuestbookId() == guestbookId) {
                       cssClass = "active";
                   }
   
                   if (GuestbookModelPermission.contains(
                       permissionChecker, curGuestbook.getGuestbookId(), "VIEW")) {
   
       %>
   
       <portlet:renderURL var="viewPageURL">
           <portlet:param name="mvcPath" value="/guestbookwebportlet/view.jsp" />
           <portlet:param name="guestbookId"
               value="<%=String.valueOf(curGuestbook.getGuestbookId())%>" />
       </portlet:renderURL>
   
   
       <aui:nav-item cssClass="<%=cssClass%>" href="<%=viewPageURL%>"
           label="<%=HtmlUtil.escape(curGuestbook.getName())%>" />
   
       <%  
                   }
   
               }
       %>
   
   </aui:nav>
   

   This code gets a list of guestbooks from the database, iterates through them, checks the permission for each against the current user’s Roles, and adds the guestbooks the user can access to a list of tabs.

   You’ve now implemented your first permission check. As you can see, it’s relatively straightforward thanks to the static methods in your helper classes. The code above shows the tab only if the current user has the VIEW permission for the guestbook.

   Next, you’ll add permission checks to the Add Entry button.

2. Scroll down to the line that reads <aui:button-row cssClass="guestbook-buttons">. Just below this line, add the following line of code to check for the ADD_ENTRY permission:

   <c:if test='<%= GuestbookPermission.contains(permissionChecker, scopeGroupId, "ADD_ENTRY") %>'>
   

3. After this is the code that creates the addEntryURL and the Add Entry button. After the aui:button tag and above the </aui:button-row> tag, add the closing tag for the <c:if> statement:

   </c:if>
   

   You’ve now implemented your permission check for the Add Entry button by using JSTL tags.

Next, you’ll implement an entry_actions.jsp that’s much like the one in the Guestbook Admin portlet. This determines what options appear for logged in users who can see the actions menu in the portlet. Just like before, you’ll wrap each renderURL in a if statement that checks the permissions against available actions. To do this, follow these steps:

1. In src/main/resources/META-INF/resources/guestbookwebportlet, create a file called entry_actions.jsp.

2. In this file, add the following code:

   <%@include file="../init.jsp"%>
   
       <%
       String mvcPath = ParamUtil.getString(request, "mvcPath");
   
       ResultRow row = (ResultRow)request.getAttribute(WebKeys.SEARCH_CONTAINER_RESULT_ROW);
   
       Entry entry = (Entry)row.getObject(); 
       %>
   
       <liferay-ui:icon-menu>
   
           <c:if
               test="<%= GuestbookEntryPermission.contains(permissionChecker, entry.getEntryId(), ActionKeys.UPDATE) %>">
               <portlet:renderURL var="editURL">
                   <portlet:param name="entryId"
                       value="<%= String.valueOf(entry.getEntryId()) %>" />
                   <portlet:param name="mvcPath" value="/guestbookwebportlet/edit_entry.jsp" />
               </portlet:renderURL>
   
               <liferay-ui:icon image="edit" message="Edit"
                   url="<%=editURL.toString() %>" />
           </c:if>
   
           <c:if
           test="<%=GuestbookEntryPermission.contains(permissionChecker, entry.getEntryId(), ActionKeys.PERMISSIONS) %>">
   
               <liferay-security:permissionsURL
                   modelResource="<%= Entry.class.getName() %>"
                   modelResourceDescription="<%= entry.getMessage() %>"
                   resourcePrimKey="<%= String.valueOf(entry.getEntryId()) %>"
                   var="permissionsURL" />
   
               <liferay-ui:icon image="permissions" url="<%= permissionsURL %>" />
   
           </c:if>
   
           <c:if
               test="<%=GuestbookEntryPermission.contains(permissionChecker, entry.getEntryId(), ActionKeys.DELETE) %>">
   
               <portlet:actionURL name="deleteEntry" var="deleteURL">
                   <portlet:param name="entryId"
                       value="<%= String.valueOf(entry.getEntryId()) %>" />
                   <portlet:param name="guestbookId"
                       value="<%= String.valueOf(entry.getGuestbookId()) %>" />
               </portlet:actionURL>
   
               <liferay-ui:icon-delete url="<%=deleteURL.toString() %>" />
           </c:if>
   
       </liferay-ui:icon-menu>
   

   This code defines action buttons updating, setting permissions on, and deleting entities. Each button is protected by a permissions check. If the current user can’t perform the given action, the action doesn’t appear.

3. Finally, in view.jsp, you must add the entry_actions.jsp as the last column in the Search Container. Find the line defining the Search Container row. It looks like this:

   <liferay-ui:search-container-row
       className="com.liferay.docs.guestbook.model.Entry" modelVar="entry">
   

   Below that line are two columns. After the second column, add a third:

   <liferay-ui:search-container-column-jsp path="/guestbookwebportlet/entry_actions.jsp" align="right" />
   

4. Save all JSP files.

Excellent! You’ve now implemented all the permissions checks for the Guestbook portlet.

When testing the application, remember that any guestbook entries you created without resources won’t work with permissions. Add new guestbooks and entries to test your application with different users. Administrative users see all the buttons, regular users see the Add Entry button, and guests see no buttons at all (but can navigate).

Note: You may see an error where the Guestbook portlet doesn’t appear at all, and you see this error in the log:

Someone may be trying to circumvent the permission checker.

This is because any data you currently have in the Guestbook application doesn’t have resources. In this case, you must drop and re-create your database. To do this, find your Liferay Workspace on your file system (it should be inside your Eclipse workspace). Inside the bundles/data folder is a hypersonic folder. Shut down Liferay DXP, remove everything from this folder, and then restart. After adding guestbook to a page, the portlet will work normally.

Now see if you can do the same for the Guestbook Admin portlet. Don’t worry if you can’t: at the end of this Learning Path is a link to the completed project for you to examine.

Great! The next step is to integrate search and indexing into your application. This is a prerequisite for the much more powerful stuff to come.