Access Requests and Grants

Starting in version 2.0, Inrupt’s Enterprise Solid Server (ESS) provides support for access requests and grants [1]. With access requests and grants:

• An agent can request access to Resource(s) hosted on a Pod. This access request includes the specific access mode (e.g., read, write, append), the Resource(s) to access, etc.

• The owner of the requested Resource(s) (i.e., individuals with Control access to the requested Resource(s)) can approve or deny the access request:

  • For an approved request, ESS creates an access grant with an approved status.

  • For a denied request, ESS creates an access grant with a denied status.

• If the requesting agent receives an access grant, the agent can use the grant to access the Resource(s).

Inrupt Client Library

To support ESS’ access requests and grants feature, Inrupt provides the @inrupt/solid-client-access-grants library. [2] This library contains APIs to manage access requests and grants issued by ESS. [3]

npm install @inrupt/solid-client-access-grants

Usage Scenario

In the following usage scenario, a user wants to print some photos that are stored in the user’s Pod. The user visits the ExamplePrinter’s web application which provides photo printing services. When the ExamplePrinter’s web application asks for the photos to print, the user enters the URLs of the photos. To continue, the ExamplePrinter’s website asks for access to read the photos.

For example, assume the user snoringsue with the WebID (https://id.example.com/snoringsue) is on ExamplePrinter’s web application to print the following photos:

• "https://storage.example.com/someIdentifier/myphotos/apples.jpg"

• "https://storage.example.com/someIdentifier/myphotos/persimmons.jpg"

• "https://storage.example.com/someIdentifier/myphotos/grapes.jpg".

The following diagram gives an overview of the flow (in the example, the access request and grants serialized as VCs)

Sequence diagram of the Access Request flow where snoringsue is requested access to her photos by ExamplePrinter and approves the request.

Next Steps

Manage Access Requests	To make access requests. If access is granted, use the Access Grants to access the resource (such as the ExamplePrinter application in above diagram).
Manage Access Grants	To approve or deny access requests (such as the Access Management application in above diagram).
Use Access Grants to Access Resources	To use approved Access Grants to access Pod resources (such as the ExamplePrinter application in above diagram).

[1]

ESS serializes the access requests and grants as Verifiable Credentials (VCs).

[2]

Inrupt’s PodBrowser also supports access requests and grants. Specifically, using the @inrupt/solid-client-access-grants library, PodBrowser provides the functionality to grant or deny the requests. That is, PodBrowser can act as a request management app.

[3]

ESS uses ACP policy to enable the use of access grants for a resource. The @inrupt/solid-client-access-grants API can handle the enablement when granting access for a resource.