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Access ControlRestricting read and write access to topics and webs, by users and groups Access Control allows you restrict access to single topics and entire webs, by individual user and by user Groups. Access control, combined with UserAuthentication, lets you easily create and manage an extremely flexible, fine-grained privilege system.On this page:
An important considerationOpen, freeform editing is the essence of WikiCulture - what makes Foswiki different and often more effective than other collaboration tools. For that reason, it is strongly recommended that the decision to restrict read or write access to a web or a topic is made with great care - the more restrictions, the less Wiki in the mix. Experience shows that unrestricted write access works very well because:
Permissions settings of the webs on this Foswiki site
Authentication vs. Access ControlAuthentication: Identifies who a user is based on a login procedure. See UserAuthentication. Access control: Restrict access to content based on users and groups once a user is identified.Users and groupsAccess control is based on the familiar concept of users and groups. Users are defined by their WikiNames. They can then be organized in unlimited combinations by inclusion in one or more user Groups. Groups can also be included in other Groups.Managing UsersIn standard Foswiki a user can create an account in UserRegistration. The following actions are performed:
Managing GroupsThe following describes the standard Foswiki support for groups. Your local Foswiki may have an alternate group mapping manager installed. Check with your Wiki administrator if you are in doubt. Groups are defined by group topics located in theMain web. To create a new group, visit WikiGroups and enter the name of the new group ending in Group into the "new group" form field. This will create a new group topic with two important settings:
ALLOWTOPICCHANGE setting defines who is allowed to change the group topic; it is a comma delimited list of users and groups. You typically want to restrict that to the members of the group itself, so it should contain the name of the topic. This prevents users not in the group from editing the topic to give themselves or others access. For example, for the KasabianGroup topic write:
The Super Admin GroupA number of Foswiki functions (for example, renaming webs) are only available to administrators. Administrators are simply users who belong to the SuperAdminGroup. This is a standard user group, the name of which is defined by {SuperAdminGroup} setting in configure. The default name of this group is theAdminGroup. The system administrator may have chosen a different name for this group if your local Foswiki uses an alternate group mapping manager, but for simplicity we will use the default name AdminGroup in the rest of this topic.
You can create new administrators simply by adding them to the AdminGroup topic. For example,
Restricting AccessAccess to webs and topics is controlled by setting the values of certain preferences. These names of these preferences have the general form: permission context mode Where permission isALLOW or DENY, _context is TOPIC, WEB, or ROOT, and mode is VIEW, CHANGE, or RENAME. For example, the preference ALLOWTOPICCHANGE lists who is allowed to change
topics in the current web.
Controlling default access to the entire Wiki.There are a number of external to Foswiki ways to require authentication before viewing any part of the wiki (apache rewrites, apache auth, proxying, etc). Or, you can useconfigure to set the EXPERT setting {AuthScripts} to contain all the scripts in the foswiki/bin directory.
However, it can be desirable to default all your created webs to exclude WikiGuest by default, and then to open up only some topics, or some webs for guest users.
This can be acheived by setting the DENYWEBVIEW setting (as below) in the SitePreferences topic, and then 'un-setting' it for specific Web's or topics.
Note: that your Main, System and Sandbox webs are still viewable by guest users
Controlling access to a WebYou can define restrictions on who is allowed to view a Wiki web. You can restrict access to certain webs to selected users and groups, by:
ALLOWWEBVIEW set, this will also apply to the subweb. Also note that you will need to ensure that the parent web's FINALPREFERENCES does not include the access control settings listed above. Otherwise you will not be able override the parent web's access control settings in sub-webs.
Creation and renaming of sub-webs is controlled by the WEBCHANGE setting on the parent web (or ROOTCHANGE for root webs). Renaming is additionally restricted by the setting of WEBRENAME in the web itself.
Controlling access to a topic
Remember when opening up access to specific topics within a restricted web that other topics in the web - for example, the WebLeftBar - may also be accessed when viewing the topics. The message you get when you are denied access should tell you what topic you were not permitted to access. Be careful with empty values for any of these.
See "How Foswiki evaluates ALLOW/DENY settings" below for more on how ALLOW and DENY interacts. Controlling access to attachmentsAttachments are referred to directly, and are not normally indirected via Foswiki scripts. This means that the above instructions for access control will not apply to attachments. It is possible that someone may inadvertently publicise a URL that they expected to be access-controlled. The easiest way to apply the same access control rules for attachments as apply to topics is to use the Apachemod_rewrite module, and configure your webserver to redirect accesses to attachments to the Foswiki viewfile script. For example,
ScriptAlias /foswiki/bin/ /filesystem/path/to/bin/
Alias /foswiki/pub/ /filesystem/path/to/pub/
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/+foswiki/+pub/+System/+.+
RewriteRule ^/+foswiki/+pub/+([^/]+)((/+([^/]+))+)/+(.+) /foswiki/bin/viewfile/$1/$2?filename=$5 [L,PT]
That way all the controls that apply to the topic also apply to attachments to the topic. Other types of webserver have similar support.
Controlling who can manage top-level websTop level webs are a special case, because they don't have a parent web with a WebPreferences. So there has to be a special control just for the root level.
ROOTCHANGE access to rename an existing top-level web. You just need WEBCHANGE in the web itself.
How Foswiki evaluates ALLOW/DENY settingsWhen deciding whether to grant access, Foswiki evaluates the following rules in order (read from the top of the list; if the logic arrives at PERMITTED or DENIED that applies immediately and no more rules are applied). You need to read the rules bearing in mind that VIEW, CHANGE and RENAME access may be granted/denied separately.
Access control and INCLUDEALLOWTOPICVIEW and ALLOWTOPICCHANGE only applies to the topic in which the settings are defined. If a topic A includes another topic B, topic A does not inherit the access rights of the included topic B. Examples: Topic A includes topic B
Access control quick recipesObfuscating websAnother way of hiding webs is to keep them hidden by not publishing the URL and by preventing theall webs search option from accessing obfuscated webs. Do so by setting the NOSEARCHALL setting in WebPreferences:
This setup can be useful to hide a new web until content its ready for deployment, or to hide view access restricted webs.
Restrict Access to a whole Foswiki siteFor a firewalled Foswiki, e.g. an intranet wiki or extranet wiki, you want to allow only invited people to access your Foswiki. In this case, enable user authentication with ApacheLogin and lock down access to the wholebin and pub directories to all but valid users. In the Apache .htaccess file or the appropriate .conf file, replace the <FilesMatch "(attach|edit|... section with this:
<FilesMatch ".*">
require valid-user
</FilesMatch>
If needed, you can further restrict access to selected webs with ALLOWWEBVIEW and other access control settings.
Authenticate all webs and restrict selected websUse the following setup to authenticate users for topic viewing in all webs and to restrict access to selected webs. Requires UserAuthentication to be enabled.
Authenticate and restrict selected webs onlyUse the following setup to provide unrestricted viewing access to open webs, with authentication only on selected webs. Requires UserAuthentication to be enabled.
Show control settingsYou can list the access controls affecting a topic using the %SHOWPREFERENCE{}% macro in the topic, thus:
%SHOWPREFERENCE{"DENYWEBVIEW,ALLOWWEBVIEW,DENYWEBCHANGE,ALLOWWEBCHANGE,DENYWEBRENAME,ALLOWWEBRENAME"}%
For this topic, this displays:
Hide control settingsTo hide access control settings from normal browser viewing, you can put them into the topic preference settings by clicking the linkEdit topic preference settings under More topic actions menu. Preferences set in this manner are not visible in the topic text, but take effect nevertheless. Access control settings added as topic preference settings are stored in the topic meta data and they override settings defined in the topic text.
Alternatively, place them in HTML comment markers, but this exposes the access setting during ordinary editing.
==<!--== Related Topics: AdminDocumentationCategory, UserAuthentication r1 - 12 Sep 2009 - 02:10:01 - ProjectContributor
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Above table comes from 
Your local Foswiki may have an alternate user mapping manager installed
which doesn't support user registration. Check with your Wiki administrator
if you are in doubt.