Authorization - SEA Modernization-VDG

Owned by Eric Jansson
Last updated: May 21, 2021 by Vinaya Mayya
1 min read

Overview

Authorization takes place after authentication is established. Authorization establishes that a particular user or client has rights to work with a particular system function or a specific piece of information. This section describes the fundamentals of authorization in connecting with an Ed-Fi API. 

Tokens & Profiles

With each request made to the API, the token obtained from the authentication process must be passed in a HTTP header, like so:

Authorization: Bearer <token_value>

The Ed-Fi API uses this token to identify the caller and determine the permissions that apply to each of the accessible API resources.

How Authorization Works

The Ed-Fi ODS / API implements authorization based on relationships of the API resource being accessed back to an education organization (EducationOrganization) and to a namespace (Namespace).



Authorization via Relationship to an EducationOrganization

This strategy is mostly applicable to Student Information Systems. In this strategy the API determines if the resource being accessed by an API client can be related to an education organization that the API client has permissions over.

Note

Please note that this authorization pattern is mostly applicable to Student Information Systems.

  1. Your client API credentials (key and secret) are associated with one or more EducationOrganizations by the operator of the API.
  2. The API traces resources your API client attempts to manage back to a root EducationOrganization. This is typically the organization that owns that record. For example:
    • for an enrollment record (StudentSchoolAssociation), the EducationOrganization is the school that the student is enrolled in
    • for a course transcript (CourseTranscript) record, this is the school or school district that owns and issued the credits
    • for a class section (Section), this is school in which class section exists
    • and so on...
  3. Your API client is authorized based on the following 2 items being true:
    • the EducationOrganization that the API resource is tied to matches an EducationOrganization associated with your API credentials
    • your API client has the proper CRUD permissions over API resources of that kind

This is a simplified view, and there are other authorization mechanisms in place on the API that affect your access, as well as other API authorization configuration options. However, you generally do not need to know about those other situations as they are more rare.

The most common pattern for assigning your API client credentials access is that it associated with the school district (LocalEducationAgency, a class of EducationOrganization) with which your organization has a contract.

If you get a 403 error, the most common cause is that the EducationOrganization tied to the resource you are trying to create or access is not associated with your credentials.

Example 1: to access a StudentSectionAssociation resource, the student (see the "studentReference" in the JSON below) must be enrolled in a school and the API client must have been authorized with permissions over that school or the school district within which that school exists.

Example API Resource JSON - StudentSectionAssociation
{
    "beginDate": "2021-04-06",
    "sectionReference": {
      "localCourseCode": "string",
      "schoolId": 0,
      "schoolYear": 0,
      "sectionIdentifier": "string",
      "sessionName": "string"
    },
    "studentReference": {
      "studentUniqueId": "string"
    },
    "attemptStatusDescriptor": "string",
    "endDate": "2021-04-06",
    "homeroomIndicator": true,
    "repeatIdentifierDescriptor": "string"
}

Authorization via Relationship to a Namespace

This strategy is mostly applicable to Assessment Systems. In this strategy the API determines if the resource being accessed by an API client can be related to the namespace assigned to the API client.

Note

Please note that this authorization pattern is mostly applicable to Assessment Systems.

  1. Your client API credentials (key and secret) are assigned a namespace by the operator of the API.
  2. The API traces resources your API client attempts to manage back to a "root entity" that has a Namespace element. This Namespace typically indicates the organization that owns that record. For example:
    • the namespace string must begin with "uri://"
    • for an assessment (Assessment) record, the namespace typically indicates the vendor that owns or provides the assessment (e.g., "uri://nwea.org", "uri://act.org", etc.)
    • for a student assessment result (StudentAssessment), this is the vendor that owns or provides the assessment for which the results were assigned
    • for a credential (Credential), this is the organization that assigns the credential (e.g., "uri://dpi.wi.gov", "uri://microsoft.com", etc.)
    • and so on...
  3. Your API client is authorized based on the following 2 items being true:
    • The namespace of the root the API resource matches the namespace associated with your API client. Note that this is actually a prefix substring match: the test is that the namespace assigned to the root entity begins with the same string as the namespace assigned to your API client (this allow some important flexibility in assigning namespaces in the model)
    • Your API client has the proper CRUD permissions over API resources of that kind

This is a simplified view, and there are other authorization mechanisms in place on the API that affect your access, as well as other API authorization configuration options. However, you generally do not need to know about those other situations as they are more rare.

If you get a 403 error, the most common cause is that the namespace tied to the resource you are trying to create or access does not match the namespace associated with your credentials.


Example 2: to access an Assessment resource, the namespace assigned to the API client must be an exact prefix substring match on the namespace on the Assessment entity (see schema below).

Assessment API resource format
{
  "id": "string",
  "assessmentFamilyReference": {
    "title": "string"
  },
  "educationOrganizationReference": {
    "educationOrganizationId": 0
  },
  "identifier": "string",
  "periodDescriptor": "string",
  "title": "string",
  "maxRawScore": 0,
  "namespace": "string",
  "nomenclature": "string",
...
}

Understanding the EducationOrganization Entity

In the Ed-Fi API, there is no EducationOrganization API resource (you can see the latest v5.2 API surface at: https://api.ed-fi.org/v5.2/docs/swagger/index.html).

This is because EducationOrganization is abstract: it only has concrete subclasses, the most common of which are: School, LocalEducationAgency, and StateEducationAgency.

However, in the data model, you will see EducationOrganization references. These are generally what is used to drive authorization. An EducationOrganization reference can be any of the concrete subclasses (School, LocalEducationAgency, etc.)

School vs LocalEducationAgency

The Ed-Fi ODS / API authorization is generally setup to account for the fact that specific schools are within a school district and transitively provide permissions from district to school. If an API resource is tied to a school (School) and not a school district (LocalEducationAgency) authorization will still work if the API client has permissions over the school district. However, the inverse is not true: authorization over a school does not grant authorization over data only associated with the school district.

For example, in the StudentSectionAssociation API resource depicted in the the right column, it is the SchoolID that is part of the sectionReference that drives authorization: to access this API resource, the API client must have permissions either over that school or the school district of which this school is a part.



Getting Started

The owner or operator of the Ed-Fi API will generally inform you which EducationOrganizations and Namespaces are associated with your credentials.

However, for EducationOrganizations that association may be obvious: if your contract is with the school district, it is quite likely that your API credentials will be associated with the school district.

If you have questions about which EducationOrganizations and Namespaces your client has permissions over, please inquire with the API operator.

Downloads

The following link is a ZIP archive containing a Postman example illustrating the relationship based authorization strategy for a student.

Ed-Fi API Client Developer Postman Example