permissions

Apps can define various permissions, and later check if the current user has the required permissions.

To define permissions, create a bolt.permissions object in the package.json file.

"permissions": {
    "create-student": {
        "displayName": "Permission to create a student",
        "description": "This grants you the permission to create a new student in the system"
    }
}

In the above snippet the developer defines a permission called create-student, and gives it a user-friendly displayName and a description.

A shorter format simply specifies and name and display name for the permission.

"permissions": {
    "create-student": {
        "displayName": "Permission to create a student",
        "description": "This grants you the permission to create a new student in the system"
    },
    "delete-student": "Permission to delete student"
}

The permission called delete-student has a displayName set to Permission to delete student but no description.

Permissions usually are granted to users during run-time.

To check if a user has been granted a certain permission defined by an app, see the Checks (API).

Tip

Although not foolproof, you can use permissions to limit features in your app in the demo or trial versions. To achieve this, provide a package.json that does not list a particular permission. For instance, the code snippet above does not list a permission named edit-student. Because the permission is not listed in the package.json it can never be granted to any user. This means whenever you check if a user has been granted the edit-student permission, the result will always be false. On the other hand, you can include the edit-student permission in the package.json of the full app so that it can be granted to users.

Also, you can simply check if the permission is returned by /api/permissions?app=<your app name>. If the permission is missing in the returned array then you can conclude that the version of your app the user is running is the trial or demo version.