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The Xacml-php library is an implementation of the OASIS/XACML standard for Policy-based authorization. It's a work in progress, but the basic concepts are there.

The OASIS Standard

The OASIS/XACML standard is a well-defined XML-based structure for evaluating attributes on Policies against attributes on Subjects to see if there's a match (based on Operation rules and combining Algorithms).

Terminology:

• PolicySet: Set of Policy objects
• Policy: Defines the policies to evaluate for authoriation. Policies contain sets of Rules that are evaluated and the results are combined according to the Policy's Algorithm for an overall Policy pass/fail status
• Rule: A Rule is made of of a set of Matches (inside a Target) that are used to evaluate authorization
• Match: An object that defines the property to look at (Designator) and the value to check against (Value) and the Operation to perform (like "StringEqual") for Permit/Deny result
• Attribute: Property on a Subject, Resource, Action or Environment
• Algorithm: Evaluation method for combining results of the object (like Policy or Rule). In the OASIS spec, these are called Functions.
• Effect: According to the spec, this can only be "PERMIT" or "DENY"
• Enforcer: Point of enforcement of the access, called the PEP (Policy Enforcement Point) in the OASIS spec.
• Decider: The object that handles the decision logic, tracing down from Policies to Matches. Called the PDP (Policy Decision Point) in the OASIS spec.
• Resource: An object representing a "something" the Subject is trying to access.

Example Usage:

This is a basic interpretation of the OASIS XACML structure and flow. It sets up the Policy structure with Rules & Matches first, then assigns them to the Resource. Then, the Subject and Resource are passed in to the Enforcer to check if they're allowed or not:

<?php

require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

$enforcer = new \Xacmlphp\Enforcer();

$decider = new \Xacmlphp\Decider();
$enforcer->setDecider($decider);

// Create some Matches
$match1 = new \Xacmlphp\Match('StringEqual', 'property1', 'TestMatch1', 'test');
$match2 = new \Xacmlphp\Match('StringEqual', 'property1', 'TestMatch2', 'test1234');

// Create a Target container for our Matches
$target = new \Xacmlphp\Target();
$target->addMatches(array($match1, $match2));

// Make a new Rule and add the Target to it
$rule1 = new \Xacmlphp\Rule();
$rule1->setTarget($target)
    ->setId('TestRule')
    ->setEffect('Permit')
    ->setDescription(
        'Test to see if there is an attribute on the subject'
        .'that exactly matches the word "test"'
    )
    ->setAlgorithm(new \Xacmlphp\Algorithm\DenyOverrides());

// Make two new policies and add the Rule to it (with our Match)
$policy1 = new \Xacmlphp\Policy();
$policy1->setAlgorithm('AllowOverrides')->setId('Policy1')->addRule($rule1);

$policy2 = new \Xacmlphp\Policy();
$policy2->setAlgorithm('DenyOverrides')->setId('Policy2')->addRule($rule1);


// Create the subject with its own Attribute
$subject = new \Xacmlphp\Subject();
$subject->addAttribute(
    new \Xacmlphp\Attribute('property1', 'test')
);

// Link the Policies to the Resource
$resource = new \Xacmlphp\Resource();
$resource
    ->addPolicy($policy1)
    ->addPolicy($policy2);


$environment = null;
$action = null;

$result = $enforcer->isAuthorized($subject, $resource);

/**
 * The Subject does have a property that's equal to "test" on the "property1"
 * attribute, but the default Operation is to "fail closed". The other Match,
 * for "test1234" failed and DenyOverrides wins so the return is false.
 */

echo "\n\n".' END RESULT: '.var_export($result, true);
echo "\n\n";

?>