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Fine Grained News - October 2024

· 4 min read
Caleb Hunter
Caleb Hunter
Community Engagement

Welcome to the October edition of Fine Grained News! As we approach the end of the year, we're excited to bring you the latest updates, improvements, and community contributions shaping the future of OpenFGA.

As always, if you’re finding the OpenFGA project to be a valuable resource, we would greatly appreciate if you would star our repo on GitHub to show your support!⭐

Just Shipped​

  • OpenFGA v1.7.0: In our latest release, we’ve introduced Access Control. This experimental feature allows you to control access to your OpenFGA server, and of course, we built it using OpenFGA! We’ve updated our Docs to show you how to enable this feature; please share your feedback in the GitHub Discussions!

  • This month, we’ve also added documentation of our OpenFGA release process.

  • We’ve improved performance for checks involving nested tuple-to-userset relations. This is commonly used when implementing nested groups. Users can enable this with the experimental flag enable-check-optimizations.

  • Following last month’s launch of OpenFGA SDK support for telemetry data using OpenTelemetry, we’ve also updated our Docs to guide users through configuration to collect tracing data and metrics.

In Progress​

Batch Check API Endpoint: We’re close to releasing a new feature to enable sending multiple check operations in a single network request.

Check out our roadmap to see what’s in the works. Feature requests and ideas can be shared in GitHub Discussions.

Community Highlights​

  • OpenFGA at Open Source Strategy Forum 2024: Kiah Imani presented “Role-Based Access Is So Yesterday: Revolutionizing Authorization with OpenFGA” at the OSSF 2024 earlier this month. The presentation is now available in Youtube Kiah Imani

  • OpenFGA at KubeCon: Andres Aguiar will participate in KubeCon/CloudNativeCon in November! OpenFGA will have a Kiosk in the Project Pavilion. He'll present a lightning talk on OpenFGA and participate in The Policy Engines Showdown.
    Andres Aguiar

  • OpenFGA in Italy: Andrea Chiarelli will present Authorize in the Cloud with OpenFGA at Cloud Day 2024 in Milan on November 20, 2024.
    Andrea Chiarelli

  • New Demp Flask App Added: To complement our OpenFGA examples and guides, we have published an example app demonstrating the integration of OpenFGA. This app utilizes several FGA features to provide a multi-user system for folder and text file sharing. Thanks to @ryanpq for your contribution!
    Ryan Quinn

  • Monthly Community Meeting: Join us for our monthly Community Meetings, held on the second Thursday of every month at 11 AM Eastern Time (US). Our next meeting is on Thursday, November 14, 2024. Our community meetings are a great way to stay updated with the latest developments, ask questions, and engage with the OpenFGA community. If you can’t join the meetings live, our latest month's video will always be posted on our YouTube channel!

    As always, we welcome community members to demo their use cases. If you want to demo your implementation of OpenFGA, please contact any of the OpenFGA team on our community channels linked below.

New Adopters​

  • This month, we welcome Gillion and Flex as OpenFGA adopters! If you or your company have implemented OpenFGA, we would love to hear about it! Please add your name as an adopter by updating the ADOPTERS.md file and sending us a PR.

  • If you or your company provides implementation services for OpenFGA, we invite you to share your information with the community in our Implementation Services section of the ADOPTERS.md file by sending us a PR! However, please note that the OpenFGA project has not evaluated or endorsed the individuals and companies listed, and inclusion does not imply endorsement.

Announcements​

  • Hacktoberfest Highlights: This Hacktoberfest, we welcomed 13 new contributors making their first commit to OpenFGA! Thanks to the incredible community participation, we saw a 28% increase in pull requests compared to September and a remarkable 260% increase in PRs on the SDK Generator. A huge thanks to this community for your continued participation and contributions!

  • OpenFGA Community Meeting Updates: We are adding chapters to our YouTube channel videos to simplify content navigation. We’ve begun with the most recent videos and will add chapters as time goes on. We have also begun releasing demos as individual videos for easier content consumption. You can catch this month’s demos on Modular Authorization and Client-Side Caching, with Materialize Integration coming soon!

See you Next Month​

Fine Grained News is published every month. If you have any feedback, want to share your OpenFGA story, or have a noteworthy update, please let us know on any of our community channels or at [email protected].

Fine Grained News - September 2024

· 4 min read
Caleb Hunter
Caleb Hunter
Community Engagement

Welcome to the September edition of Fine Grained News! As we transition into the fall season, we’re excited to bring you the latest updates on the progress of OpenFGA.

Just Shipped​

In Progress​

  • Authorization for OpenFGA: OpenFGA currently supports global pre-shared keys and OIDC for API authentication, but we’re exploring more granular authorization options, such as store-specific credentials and varying permissions for stores, modules, and types.

  • Batch Check: OpenFGA SDKs currently implement BatchCheck by issuing multiple parallel request to the OpenFGA server. We'll be implementing a BatchCheck server endpoint to improve performance and reduce network overhead.

Check out our roadmap to see what’s in the works. Feature requests and ideas can be shared in GitHub Discussions.

Community Highlights​

New Adopters​

  • If you or your company have implemented OpenFGA, we would love to hear about it! Please add your name as yourself as an adopter by updating the Adopters.md file and send us a PR.
  • If you or your company provides implementation services for OpenFGA, we invite you to share your information with the community in our Implementation Services section of the Adopters.md file by sending us a PR! However, please note that the listed individuals and companies have not been evaluated or endorsed by the OpenFGA project, and inclusion on the list does not imply endorsement.

Announcements​

  • Hacktoberfest 2024: Hacktoberfest is a month long celebration of open source software which encourages new and experienced developers alike to contribute code to open source projects during the month of October. This makes October a great time to become an OpenFGA contributor! We have labeled a number of issues on GitHub with "Hacktoberfest" and "Good First Issue" labels making it easy to find a way to get involved and have your code included in OpenFGA.
  • Monthly Community Meeting: Join us for our monthly Community Meetings, held on the second Thursday of every month at 11 AM Eastern Time (US). Our next meeting is on Thursday, October 10, 2024. Our community meetings are a great way to stay updated with the latest developments, ask questions, and engage with the OpenFGA community. If you would like to demo your implementation of OpenFGA, please reach out to us on any of our community channels or at [email protected]. You can find the link to the meeting invite here. We look forward to seeing you there!

See You Next Month!​

Fine Grained News is published every month. If you have any feedback, want to share your OpenFGA story, or have a noteworthy update, please let us know on any of our community channels or at [email protected].

Fine Grained News - August 2024

· 5 min read
Caleb Hunter
Caleb Hunter
Community Engagement

Welcome to the August 2024 edition of Fine Grained News! We are excited to bring you the latest updates, features, and community highlights from OpenFGA.

Just Shipped!​

Security Advisory​

We recently addressed a security issue, identified as GHSA-3f6g-m4hr-59h8, that was present in OpenFGA v1.5.7 and v1.5.8. This issue has been fixed starting v1.5.9, and we strongly recommend all users update to the latest version to ensure their systems remain secure. For more details, please refer to the security advisory on our GitHub page.

In Progress​

Curious about what’s coming next for OpenFGA? Check out our roadmap to see what’s in store. We also welcome your feature requests and ideas in GitHub Discussions.

Community Highlights​

  • CNCF Security TAG: This month, Andrés Aguiar presented OpenFGA to the CNCF Security Technical Advisory Group (TAG), where he discussed the project's current status and showcased various use cases. You can see the presentation deck here. It’s a great way to see how OpenFGA is being utilized and what’s on the horizon for the project.
  • API Security: APISIX + OpenFGA: Check out this blog post by Kaan Kahraman on enhancing API security by integrating APISIX with OpenFGA.

Upcoming Events​

New Adopters​

We want to welcome Patika Global Technology as an OpenFGA adopter! If you're using OpenFGA in production, we encourage you to add your company or project to our Adopters list by opening a PR. Please include a short description of your use case in your submission. If you’ve previously added your company or project to the adopter's list, we would appreciate you updating it to include a short description. Your contributions help the community, and we greatly appreciate your support!

OpenFGA Service Providers​

We’ve added a new section within the Adopters list for those offering OpenFGA implementation services. If your organization wants help adopting OpenFGA, this resource can connect you with professionals specializing in our technology. If your company provides implementation services for OpenFGA, we invite you to add your details by sending us a PR! Please note that the listed companies have not been individually evaluated or endorsed by the OpenFGA project, and inclusion on the list does not imply endorsement.

Announcements​

  • OpenFGA Joins Docker-Sponsored Open Source Program: We’re excited to share that OpenFGA has been accepted into the Docker-Sponsored Open Source Program! This partnership allows us to distribute our container image more efficiently and securely, ensuring that our community can easily access and trust the latest versions of OpenFGA on Docker Hub with higher rate limits.
  • 2024 Community Survey Participation: A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the 2024 Community Survey! Your insights are invaluable in helping us shape the future of OpenFGA. We truly appreciate the time and thought you put into sharing your experiences and suggestions. Remember, we always welcome feedback across our community channels — your input is what drives us forward.
  • Monthly Community Meeting: Join us for our monthly Community Meetings, held on the second Thursday of every month at 11 AM Eastern Time (US). Our next meeting is on Thursday, September 12, 2024. These meetings are a fantastic opportunity to stay updated with the latest developments, ask questions, and engage with the OpenFGA community. You can find the link to the meeting invite here. We look forward to seeing you there!

See You Next Month!​

Fine Grained News is published every month. Although we have transitioned from Discord to the CNCF Slack channel, we want to continue to hear from you! Whether you have questions or feedback or just want to connect with others using OpenFGA, our community channels are the best place to do so. You can reach us at:

  • CNCF Slack: Join the conversation in the #openfga channel. Please note: If you are not currently part of the CNCF Slack channel, you will need to click here to join the channel first.
  • GitHub Discussions: Share your feedback, ask questions, and engage with the community on GitHub Discussions.
  • Twitter: Follow us @openfga for updates and news.

Visit our community page for more details and to join these channels. We look forward to your contributions and conversations!

Fine Grained News - July 2024

· 4 min read
Caleb Hunter
Caleb Hunter
Community Engagement

Welcome to the July 2024 edition of Fine Grained News! We are thrilled to bring you the latest updates, features, and community highlights from OpenFGA. This month has included releases, performance improvements, and insights shared through our community meetings and presentations.

We value your feedback and invite you to participate in our 2024 OpenFGA Community Survey. Your insights help us understand your needs better and improve our offerings. Please take a few minutes to complete the survey and let your voice be heard.

Improvements​

Latest Features

  • We’ve introduced consistency options for query requests. This new, experimental, feature provides more flexibility and control over how queries are executed, enhancing the accuracy and reliability of query results. Learn more about this update.

  • We’re now publishing images to ghcr.io/openfga/openfga as an alternative to DockerHub, thanks to the contribution from @JAORMX. This provides an additional option for accessing and deploying our containers. Read more.

Performance Improvements

  • We've improved our Check latency up to 20X in some scenarios in OpenFGA v1.5.7 and v1.5.6.

If you have any feedback, or want to try a feature early, or are interested to learn more, please reach out!

Breaking Changes​

Several breaking changes related to the storage interface have been introduced. These changes should not impact your usage of OpenFGA unless you are implementing a custom storage adapter for OpenFGA.

In Progress​

  • Additional Consistency Options for OpenFGA queries: We've just shipped the first iteration of this feature, we're working on adding support for it in more SDKs. We’ll also be working on adding a consistency token in the future.

  • Telemetry for SDKs: We shipped OpenTelemetry Metrics support for Python and Javascript. We’ll be adding metrics support to the rest of the SDKs and then add support for tracing and logging. If you have feedback regarding our OpenTelemetry support, please do reach out on any of our community channels.

  • We’ll keep working on Performance Improvements for Check, List Objects and List Users APIs.

  • We’ll be adding additional authorization options for OpenFGA to restrict API credentials to performing specific actions in OpenFGA stores.

  • We collaborated with members of the CNCF TAG-Security team for a few weeks to get it wrapped up (thanks Krishna Krishna and Eddie for your help).

Community Highlights​

  • Check out July’s Community Meeting! It's a great opportunity to stay updated with the latest developments, ask questions, and engage with the OpenFGA community.

  • Maria Ines Parnisari from the OpenFGA team and Evan Anderson from Stacklok presented on Implementing a Multi-Tenant, Relationship-Based Authorization Model with OpenFGA at CloudNative SecurityCon North America. If you didn’t attend the conference in June, the presentation recording is now live.

  • This month, Andres Aguiar and Damian Schenkelman appeared in the Identerati Office Hours livestream for an in-depth exploration of OpenFGA. This video covers advanced topics and provides valuable insights into the capabilities and implementation of OpenFGA. Whether you're a seasoned user or new to OpenFGA, this deep dive is packed with information that will enhance your understanding and usage of the platform.

  • Andres Aguiar sat down with Open at Intel host Katherine Druckman during KubeCon Europe to discuss OpenFGA. You can hear that podcast here.

New Adopters​

We’re happy to share that Bump is now an OpenFGA adopter! If you are using OpenFGA in production, please consider adding your company or project to our list. Your contribution will be greatly appreciated!

Announcements​

Join us for our monthly Community Meetings, held on the second Thursday of every month at 11am Eastern Time (US). Our next meeting is on Thursday, August 8, 2024. These meetings are a fantastic opportunity to stay updated with the latest developments, ask questions, and engage with the OpenFGA community. You can find the link to the meeting invite here. We look forward to seeing you there!

Transitioning from Discord to CNCF's Slack​

As a reminder, we transitioned out from Discord for OpenFGA and are now using the CNCF #openfga Slack channel. If you are not part of the CNCF Slack workspace, you need to join the CNCF Slack first.

See You Next Month!​

Fine Grained News is published every month. If you have any feedback, want to share your OpenFGA story, or have a noteworthy update, please let us know on any of our community channels or at [email protected].

Query Consistency Options in OpenFGA

· 2 min read
Andres Aguiar
Andres Aguiar
Product Manager

OpenFGA query APIs now allow specifying the desired consistency of query results. By default, OpenFGA does not use a cache. However, when caching is enabled, it applies to all requests. This means that any changes in permissions won't be reflected in authorization checks during the cache TTL period.

The community expressed the need for flexibility in using the cache on a per-request basis. In response, starting with OpenFGA v1.5.7, all query APIs can accept a consistency parameter with the following values:

NameDescription
MINIMIZE_LATENCY (default)OpenFGA will try to minimize latency (e.g. by making use of the cache)
HIGHER_CONSISTENCYOpenFGA will try to optimize for stronger consistency (e.g. by bypassing cache)

When HIGHER_CONSISTENCY is specified, OpenFGA reads directly from the database, even when the cache is enabled.

How to use it?​

The new consistency parameter is available in OpenFGA starting v1.5.7.

The parameter is supported by all OpenFGA SDKs.

For more information on enabling the cache and best practices for specifying consistency values, refer to the documentation.

Custom database adapter implementations​

For those with a custom database adapter for a multi-region database, the behavior of the HIGHER_CONSISTENCY parameter can be defined according to your needs. With an eventually consistent database (e.g., Dynamo DB) in a multi-region setup, there will be replication lag even if the cache is bypassed. If the database supports strong reads, you can choose to perform those at an extra cost. Otherwise, you can perform an eventually consistent read without providing full consistency semantics to the caller. In some other databases where you have Read/Write replicas, you may choose to go to the Write replica when the HIGHER_CONSISTENCY preference is selected.

Future work​

Google Zanzibar features a consistency token called Zookies, returned from write operations. This token can be stored in a resource table and specified in subsequent query API calls. We are considering introducing a similar feature in future releases.

We want your feedback!​

We want to learn how you use this API and how we can improve it!

Please reach out through our community channels with any questions or feedback.

Fine Grained News - June 2024

· 3 min read
Andres Aguiar
Andres Aguiar
Product Manager

Welcome to Fine Grained News, June 2024 edition!

This is where we share what has been going on in the OpenFGA community during the last 30 days :).

What are we working on?​

  • We started adding OpenTelemetry instrumentation to our SDKs. We just shipped metrics support for Python and Javascript. We'll continue with tracing and logging, and we'll be adding support for Java, Go and .NET next.

  • We are close to ship a first iteration to add additional consistency options for OpenFGA.

  • We are working with Krishna Kumar and Eddie Knight from the CNCF Tag-Security team on a joint security assessment for OpenFGA. We are pretty close to wrapping it up! You can follow the progress in this PR.

  • We'll be working on adding authorization for OpenFGA APIs.

  • We've identified a few areas where we can improve performance and we are actively working on them.

If you have any feedback, or want to try a feature early, or are interested to learn more, please reach out!

New Adopters​

We are thrilled to welcome Sourcegraph to the list of companies in our Adopters list! We are proud to be addressing their fine-grained authorization needs.

If you are using OpenFGA in production, please consider adding your company/project to the list, it will be greatly appreciated!

Community​

OpenFGA @ CloudNative SecurityCon​

OpenFGA was present in CloudNative SecurityCon North America!

Maria Ines Parnisari from the OpenFGA team and Evan Anderson from Stacklok presented on Implementing a Multi-Tenant, Relationship-Based Authorization Model with OpenFGA.

CloudNative SecurityCon Presentation

We also got a last-minute kiosk to showcase OpenFGA at the event:

OpenFGA Kiosk

Thanks to everyone that stopped by!

Latest Features​

In case you missed them, here are some of the latest major features we've added to OpenFGA:

Transitioning from Discord to CNCF's Slack​

As we mentioned before, we transitioned out from Discord for OpenFGA and are now using the CNCF #openfga Slack channel. If you are not part of the CNCF Slack workspace, you need to join the CNCF Slack first.

Checkout https://openfga.dev/community for all the places to find us.

See you next month!​

Fine Grained News are published every month. If you have any feedback, want to share your OpenFGA story, or know about something that you think is worth mentioning, please let us know!

Fine Grained News - May 2024

· 2 min read
Andres Aguiar
Andres Aguiar
Product Manager

Welcome to Fine Grained News, May edition!

New Releases!​

What's Next​

Please check the items above and let us know if you have any feedback or idea.

OpenFGA @ CloudNative SecurityCon​

OpenFGA will be present in CloudNative SecurityCon North America!

Maria Ines Parnisari from the OpenFGA team and Evan Anderson from Stacklok will be presenting on Implementing a Multi-Tenant, Relationship-Based Authorization Model with OpenFGA.

We hope to see you there!

Latest Features​

In case you missed them, here are some of the latest major features we've added to OpenFGA:

Transitioning from Discord to CNCF's Slack​

As we mentioned before, we transitioned out from Discord for OpenFGA and are now using the CNCF #openfga Slack channel. If you are not part of the CNCF Slack workspace, you need to join the CNCF Slack first.

Checkout https://openfga.dev/community for all the places to find us.

See you next month!​

Fine Grained News are published every month. If you have any feedback, want to share your OpenFGA story, or know about something that you think is worth mentioning, please let us know!

List Users API

· One min read
Maria Ines Parnisari
Maria Ines Parnisari

Today we are launching a new API for OpenFGA: ListUsers.

This API will answer the question "what users have relation X with object Y?". This will be useful, for example, in UIs that want to display the list of users that a resource has been shared with, e.g. the "share" dialog in Google Docs.

You can read more about it in the API docs and the product documentation.

How to use it?​

ListUsers is available in OpenFGA starting with v1.5.4.

To be able to call this API, you must turn on this flag on the server: --experimentals enable-list-users. Be sure to also check out the various configuration flags that were added to control its behavior.

The new functionality is available on the latest versions of the Java, .NET, Go and Javascript SDK, CLI and VS Code integration.

We'll be releasing support for the Python SDK soon.

We want your feedback!​

We want to learn how you use this API and how we can improve it!

Please reach out through our community channels with any questions or feedback.

Fine Grained News - April 2024

· 2 min read
Andres Aguiar
Andres Aguiar
Product Manager

Welcome to Fine Grained News, April edition!

New Releases!​

  • Modular Models is now part of the OpenFGA core, making it easy for multiple teams to collaborate on a single OpenFGA model. Check it out, we love the feature! :)

  • Thanks to the help provided by the Spring Security team there's now a Spring Boot Starter for OpenFGA!

  • We shipped an OpenFGA Release Candidate with a new ListUsers API, that can be enabled with an experimental flag. ListUsers allows you to retrieve all the users that have a specific relation with a resource, for example, all users that can view a document.

OpenFGA Hackathon​

A few weeks ago we hosted a Hackathon where multiple team members experimented new ideas around OpenFGA. You'll need to wait until the next community meeting to learn more :).

OpenFGA Security Assessment​

We are working with the CNCF Tag-Security team on a joint security assessment, which is a step required to get accepted as a CNCF Incubation project.

What's Next​

Please check the items above and let us know if you have any feedback or idea.

Transitioning from Discord to CNCF's Slack​

As we mentioned in the last edition, we transitioned out from Discord for OpenFGA and are now using the CNCF #openfga Slack channel. If you are not part of the CNCF Slack workspace, you need to join the CNCF Slack first.

See you next month!​

Fine Grained News are published every month. If you have any feedback, want to share your OpenFGA story, or know about something that you think is worth mentioning, please let us know!

Modular Models

· 2 min read
Ewan Harris
Ewan Harris

Modular models aims to improve the model authoring experience when multiple teams are maintaining a model, such as:

  • A model can grow large and difficult to understand
  • As more teams begin to contribute to a model, the ownership boundaries may not be clear and code review processes might not scale

With modular models, a single model can be separated across multiple files allow grouping of types and conditions into modules. This means that a model can be organized more easily in terms of team or organizational structure. Used in conjunction with features such as GitHub, GitLab or Gitea's code owners, it should become easier to ensure the owners of a portion of your model are correctly assigned to review it.

How to use it?​

Modular models is available in the latest version of OpenFGA. To use it you need to:

What's next?​

Looking beyond the near term, modular models allows us to implement additional API authorization options for OpenFGA.

Reach out!​

We want to learn how you use this feature and how we can improve it!

Please reach out through our community channels with any questions or feedback.