Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
In this document, you'll get a high-level overview of how you can implement role-based access control (RBAC) in your Medusa backend.
Overview
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) refers to the level of access a user has. Typically, in e-commerce, you may require RBAC if you want users to only be able to perform certain actions.
For example, you may want a content-manager user who can only access CMS functionalities and another manager user who can only access order functionalities. RBAC is also useful in marketplace use cases.
This guide gives you a high-level approach to implementing RBAC in Medusa. The examples included in this guide provide a simple implementation to give you an idea of how you can implement this functionality in your Medusa backend.
Create Role and Permission Entities
When implementing RBAC, you typically require the availability of roles and permissions. A role would include different permissions, such as the ability to access the products’ route, and it can be assigned to one or more users.
So, the first step would be to create the Role and Permission entities to represent this data. Also, since you’ll be creating relations to other entities, such as the User entity, you need to extend the core entities to implement these relations.
Learn how to create an entity.
Learn how to extend a core entity.
Example Implementation
Create Guard Middleware
To ensure that users who have the privilege can access an API Route, you must create a middleware that guards admin routes. This middleware will run on all authenticated admin requests to ensure that only allowed users can access an API Route.
Since the Medusa backend uses Express, you can create a middleware and attach it to all admin routes.
Learn how to create a middleware in Medusa.
Example Implementation
Create API Routes and Services
To manage the roles and permissions, you’ll need to create custom API Routes, typically for Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations.
You’ll also need to create a service for each of Role and Permission entities to perform these operations on them. The entity uses the service within its code.
Furthermore, you may need to extend core services if you need to perform actions on core entities that you’ve extended, such as the User entity.
Learn how to create an API Route in Medusa.
Learn how to create a service in Medusa
Learn how to extend a core service in Medusa
Example Implementation
Additional Development
If your use case requires other changes or functionality implementations, check out the Medusa Development section of the documentation for all available development guides.