Command syntax

Description

Grant or deny access permissions for a user account, globally or on a per-database or per-table basis.

There are four different permissions that can be granted to an account:

• read allows reading the data in tables.
• write allows modifying data, including inserting, replacing/updating, and deleting.
• connect allows a user to open HTTP connections via the http command. This permission can only be granted in global scope.
• config allows users to create/drop secondary indexes on a table and changing the cluster configuration; to create and drop tables, if granted on a database; and to create and drop databases, if granted globally.

Permissions may be granted on a global scope, or granted for a specific table or database. The scope is defined by calling grant on its own (e.g., r.grant(), on a table (r.table().grant()), or on a database (r.db().grant()).

The grant command returns an object of the following form:

{
    "granted": 1,
    "permissions_changes": [
        {
            "new_val": { new permissions },
            "old_val": { original permissions }
        }
    ]

The granted field will always be 1, and the permissions_changes list will have one object, describing the new permissions values and the old values they were changed from (which may be null).

Permissions that are not defined on a local scope will be inherited from the next largest scope. For example, a write operation on a table will first check if write permissions are explicitly set to true or false for that table and account combination; if they are not, the write permissions for the database will be used if those are explicitly set; and if neither table nor database permissions are set for that account, the global write permissions for that account will be used.

Note: For all accounts other than the special, system-defined admin account, permissions that are not explicitly set in any scope will effectively be false. When you create a new user account by inserting a record into the system table, that account will have no permissions until they are explicitly granted.

For a full description of permissions, read Permissions and user accounts.

Example: Grant the chatapp user account read and write permissions on the users database.

r.db("users").grant("chatapp", r.hashMap("read", true).with("write", true)).run(conn);

Return:

{
    "granted": 1,
    "permissions_changes": [
        {
            "new_val": { "read": true, "write": true },
            "old_val": { null }
        }
    ]

Example: Deny write permissions from the chatapp account for the admin table.

r.db("users").table("admin").grant("chatapp", r.hashMap("write", false)).run(conn);

This will override the write: true permissions granted in the first example, but for this table only. Other tables in the users database will inherit from the database permissions.

Example: Delete a table-level permission for the chatapp account.

r.db("users").table("admin").grant("chatapp", r.hashMap("write", null)).run(conn);

By specifying None, the table scope write permission is removed, and will again inherit from the next highest scope (database or global).

Example: Grant chatapp the ability to use HTTP connections.

r.grant("chatapp", r.hashMap("connect", true)).run(conn);

This grant can only be given on a global level.

Example: Grant a monitor account read-only access to all databases.

r.grant("monitor", r.hashMap("read", true)).run(conn);