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An authorization library that supports access control models like ACL, RBAC, ABAC in Node.JS
News: still worry about how to write the correct node-casbin policy? Casbin online editor is coming to help!

node-casbin is a powerful and efficient open-source access control library for Node.JS projects. It provides support for enforcing authorization based on various access control models.
![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
|---|---|---|---|
| Casbin | jCasbin | node-Casbin | PHP-Casbin |
| production-ready | production-ready | production-ready | production-ready |
![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
|---|---|---|---|
| PyCasbin | Casbin.NET | Casbin-CPP | Casbin-RS |
| production-ready | production-ready | beta-test | production-ready |
https://casbin.org/docs/overview
# NPM
npm install casbin --save
# Yarn
yarn add casbin
New a node-casbin enforcer with a model file and a policy file, see Model section for details:
// For Node.js:
const { newEnforcer } = require('casbin');
// For browser:
// import { newEnforcer } from 'casbin';
const enforcer = await newEnforcer('basic_model.conf', 'basic_policy.csv');
Note: you can also initialize an enforcer with policy in DB instead of file, see Persistence section for details.
Add an enforcement hook into your code right before the access happens:
const sub = 'alice'; // the user that wants to access a resource.
const obj = 'data1'; // the resource that is going to be accessed.
const act = 'read'; // the operation that the user performs on the resource.
// Async:
const res = await enforcer.enforce(sub, obj, act);
// Sync:
// const res = enforcer.enforceSync(sub, obj, act);
if (res) {
// permit alice to read data1
} else {
// deny the request, show an error
}
Besides the static policy file, node-casbin also provides API for permission management at run-time.
For example, You can get all the roles assigned to a user as below:
const roles = await enforcer.getRolesForUser('alice');
See Policy management APIs for more usage.
Casbin provides two sets of APIs to manage permissions:
https://casbin.org/docs/supported-models
https://casbin.org/docs/adapters
https://casbin.org/docs/watchers
https://casbin.org/docs/role-managers
This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute.
This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
If you have any issues or feature requests, please contact us. PR is welcomed.
FAQs
An authorization library that supports access control models like ACL, RBAC, ABAC in Node.JS
The npm package casbin receives a total of 55,225 weekly downloads. As such, casbin popularity was classified as popular.
We found that casbin demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 2 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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