ASP.NET MVC 4 Custom Authorize Attribute with Permission Codes (without roles)

I need to control the access to views based on users privilege levels (there are no roles, only privilege levels for CRUD operation levels assigned to users) in my MVC 4 application.

As an example; below the AuthorizeUser will be my custom attribute and I need to use it like this:

[AuthorizeUser(AccessLevels="Read Invoice, Update Invoice")]
public ActionResult UpdateInvoice(int invoiceId)
{
   // some code...
   return View();
}


[AuthorizeUser(AccessLevels="Create Invoice")]
public ActionResult CreateNewInvoice()
{
  // some code...
  return View();
}


[AuthorizeUser(AccessLevels="Delete Invoice")]
public ActionResult DeleteInvoice(int invoiceId)
{
  // some code...
  return View();
}

Is it possible to do it this way?

Solution 1:

I could do this with a custom attribute as follows.

[AuthorizeUser(AccessLevel = "Create")]
public ActionResult CreateNewInvoice()
{
    //...
    return View();
}

Custom Attribute class as follows.

public class AuthorizeUserAttribute : AuthorizeAttribute
{
    // Custom property
    public string AccessLevel { get; set; }

    protected override bool AuthorizeCore(HttpContextBase httpContext)
    {
        var isAuthorized = base.AuthorizeCore(httpContext);
        if (!isAuthorized)
        {                
            return false;
        }

        string privilegeLevels = string.Join("", GetUserRights(httpContext.User.Identity.Name.ToString())); // Call another method to get rights of the user from DB

        return privilegeLevels.Contains(this.AccessLevel);           
    }
}

You can redirect an unauthorised user in your custom AuthorisationAttribute by overriding the HandleUnauthorizedRequest method:

protected override void HandleUnauthorizedRequest(AuthorizationContext filterContext)
{
    filterContext.Result = new RedirectToRouteResult(
                new RouteValueDictionary(
                    new
                        { 
                            controller = "Error", 
                            action = "Unauthorised" 
                        })
                );
}

Solution 2:

Here is a modification for the prev. answer. The main difference is when the user is not authenticated, it uses the original "HandleUnauthorizedRequest" method to redirect to login page:

   protected override void HandleUnauthorizedRequest(AuthorizationContext filterContext)
    {

        if (filterContext.HttpContext.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) {

            filterContext.Result = new RedirectToRouteResult(
                        new RouteValueDictionary(
                            new
                            {
                                controller = "Account",
                                action = "Unauthorised"
                            })
                        );
        }
        else
        {
             base.HandleUnauthorizedRequest(filterContext);
        }
    }

Solution 3:

Maybe this is useful to anyone in the future, I have implemented a custom Authorize Attribute like this:

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = true, Inherited = true)]
public class ClaimAuthorizeAttribute : AuthorizeAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter
{
    private readonly string _claim;

    public ClaimAuthorizeAttribute(string Claim)
    {
        _claim = Claim;
    }

    public void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationFilterContext context)
    {
        var user = context.HttpContext.User;
        if(user.Identity.IsAuthenticated && user.HasClaim(ClaimTypes.Name, _claim))
        {
            return;
        }

        context.Result = new ForbidResult();
    }
}