Auth0 provides two ways to implement role-based access control (RBAC), which you can use in place of or in combination with your API’s own internal access control system:The Authorization Core feature set matches the functionality of the Authorization Extension, improves performance and scalability, and provides a more flexible RBAC system than the Authorization Extension.Currently, both implement the key features of RBAC and allow you to restrict the custom scopes defined for an API to those that have been assigned to the user as permissions.

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Prerequisite

Before you begin, make sure that you have an existing application that can be used with the Authorization Extension. You can use the following types of applications:
  • Native apps
  • Regular web apps
  • Single-page apps
Applications without an assigned type or machine-to-machine apps cannot be used with this extension.

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Install extension

  1. Go to Auth0 Dashboard > Extensions.
  2. Select Auth0 Authorization and answer the prompt to install.
  3. Choose where you would like to store your data: Webtask Storage or Amazon S3 bucket.
Once the extension is installed, you will see it listed under the Installed Extensions.
Dashboard - Extensions - Installed Extensions - Authorization Extension
Installing this extension creates an auth0-authz application for your account. Do not edit or delete this application! If you uninstall the extension at a later date, this application will be deleted automatically.
When you click the link to open the extension for the first time, you will be asked to provide permission for the extension to access your Auth0 account. If you do, you will be taken to the Authorization Dashboard.
Dashboard - Extensions - Authorization Dashboard - Users

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Webtask storage

The extension will use Webtask Storage by default, and you are limited to 500 KB of data. This is equivalent to:
  • 1000 groups and 3000 users, where each user is a member of 3 groups
  • 20 groups and 7000 users, where each user is a member of 3 groups

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Amazon S3

Alternatively, you can use Amazon S3 as a storage provider. Amazon S3 is a file-based storage platform, which means it writes in parallel. This may cause issues, but the extension’s storage logic attempts to take this into account. However, if you automate the creation of groups, roles, or permissions, Auth0 recommends that you use sequential calls to the API.
This extension has limitations in terms of performance and is not meant to be used with large data sets. Before you choose Amazon S3 for data storage, we recommend that you test and see how it performs for your case. Performance degradation is also a possibility as more data is added to S3.
To use Amazon S3, you need to:
  1. Create an S3 bucket.
  2. Create an IAM user and get the Key ID for that user.
  3. Create a policy for the IAM user that allows the user to make changes to the bucket.
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:ListBucket",
                "s3:PutObject"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::{nameOfYourBucket}/*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:ListBucket"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::{nameOfYourBucket}"
            ],
            "Condition": {}
        }
    ]
}

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