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Image Added This topic is discussed in the Advanced Topics training video.

Grouper users Users of Grouper sometimes need to create and manage entities in Grouper which that are not part of a central subject source. An example is an application might manage access to a database where schemas are connecting which are application schemas. The access management application will need to represent these schemas where Grouper integrates with an external database that has schemas needed for access management. These schemas must be represented in Grouper so they can be assigned to Groups/Roles/Permissions. Before Grouper 2.1 this could be solved by creating a Group group to represent the local entity, and not assign assigning members to the group. In Grouper 2.1 an a "local entity" can be created in the folder structure. Entities

Local entities are not intended to be used to represent people that are already represented or could easily be represented in another source.

Description

An A local entity in Grouper is an object in the Grouper namespace (folder structure), that non-grouper-admins can create, manage, use. It is a Java interface in the API (Entity), which has:

id - uuid, doesnt doesn't change
extension - system name in the folder, shouldnt shouldn't change
display extension - display name in the folder, can change
description - free form text documentation about the entity
name - fully qualified (including parent folders) system name
display name - fully qualified (including parent folders) display name
subjectIdentifier attribute - if the identifier of the entity is not valid for the extension (e.g. if it could contain a colon, or other invalid character in the grouper extension namespace), then you can put any fully qualified (including folder names) identifier here. Note, no two entities can have the same subjectIdentifier. Also, this attribute is public, meaning anyone can read (if they can VIEW the entity), or update it (if the can ADMIN the entity)

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. Note, this security to be maintained, this assumes a hierarchical security model for folders... i.e. you must trust the owners of parent folders where the entities are stored since they can have a subjectIdentifier with a colon inside. The attribute must start with the folder where the entity is stored. This is autocreated for you, depending on your config, might be here: etc:attribute:entities:entitySubjectIdentifier Assign this to the local entity (e.g. with UI), and give the string value which is the identifier. Note: the assignment to the local entity is done with a "group attribute assignment" not an "entity attribute assignment"

Local entity subjects

Grouper entities have a subject source different than the grouper Grouper subject source (though similar). Since there is an optional subjectIdentifier attribute, queries for search or findByIdentifier will consider that value. Also, the following subject attributes exist in addition to the Group group subject attributes (name, extension, displayName, description, etc) :

Attribute name	Meaning
entityIdAttribute	if there is an entity id attribute assigned, this is the value
entityId	if there is an entity id attribute assigned, it is used, if not, then this is the name attribute
entityExtension	if there is an entity id attribute assigned, this is the suffix after the entity folder name and colon, if not, then this is the extension (not of attribute)

API

You can create an a local entity with the EntitySave class:

Code Block
Entity testEntity = new EntitySave(grouperSession).assignCreateParentStemsIfNotExist(true) .assignName("test:testEntity").save();

You can find local entities with the EntityFinder class (note a grouper session must be open, and the grouper session user must have VIEW or ADMIN on the entity to show the result):

Code Block
Set<Entity> entities = new EntityFinder().addName("test:testEntity").findEntities();

dfs

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Local entity typeOfGroup

The "Group" object in Grouper is close to what we need for entities, they are in the namespace, they have some privileges (only ADMIN and VIEW are needed), and they have UI/WS support. The implementation of this enhancement is to have a typeOfGroup option as entity. Currently for v2.1 the options are "group", "role", and "entity".

The implementation of groups in the database has entries in the grouper_group_set table for each of the possible "lists". The only grouper_group_sets for entities are: admins, viewers.

An A local entity is modeled as a grouper group object, but you cannot ad members to it, and of course you cannot add role permissions to it. Though of course if it were a member of a role, you could add individual permissions in the context of that role.

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Local entity privileges

There are only two privileges for local entities: VIEW and ADMIN.

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In the grouper.properties you can designate if entities are viewable by all by default. This occurs on local entity create, and can be unassigned. This defaults to false for security reasons

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If you try to assign READ, UPDATE, OPTIN, OPTOUT to an a local entity, you will get an error

Note: when you assign privileges in the API you use the AccessPrivilege class, e.g. AccessPrivilege.VIEW

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Local entity auditing, change log, point in time

Entities are auditing like groups, but the categories are: entity, and the actions are addEntity, updateEntity, and deleteEntity.

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The point in time information is available, similar to point in time information on groups.

Misc

For hooks, just use group hooks and check that typeOfGroup equals 'entity'

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Obviously you cannot make an entity into a composite, or add an a local entity as a part of a composite

Web services

Note: all web service changes are also available in the grouper Grouper client.

You can create an a local entity (or edit, delete), with the group web services and typeOfGroup

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Code Block

<WsRestFindGroupsRequest>
 <wsQueryFilter>
  <typeOfGroups>entity</typeOfGroups>
  <queryFilterType>FIND_BY_GROUP_NAME_APPROXIMATE</queryFilterType>
  <groupName>aStem:aGroup</groupName>
  <stemName>aStem</stemName>
 </wsQueryFilter>
</WsRestFindGroupsRequest>