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casbin-fastapi-decorator

Authorization decorator factory for FastAPI based on Casbin and fastapi-decorators.

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📚 Documentation · PyPI · Casbin Ecosystem


Decorators are applied directly to routes — no middleware, no extra parameters in your function signatures.

Why decorator, not middleware?

Feature casbin-fastapi-decorator fastapi-authz / fastapi-casbin-auth
Approach Decorator per route Global middleware
Per-route permission config
Dynamic objects from request AccessSubject
No extra params in endpoint signature
Native FastAPI DI integration ⚠️ partial
JWT extras
DB-backed policies (SQLAlchemy async)
File policies with hot-reload
Casdoor OAuth2 integration
Works with APIRouter

Middleware-based authorization checks every incoming request globally. With a decorator, you configure permissions exactly where the route is defined — no hidden side effects, no boilerplate dependencies in every function signature.

Performance

That difference is measurable. Mean latency per request, same Casbin model and policy for every library, 1000 policy rules (full results, methodology):

route decorator fastapi-authz fastapi-casbin-auth
unprotected (/health) 19 µs (1.0x) 1237 µs (65x) 1123 µs (59x)
authenticated only (auth_required()) 45 µs (2.1x) 1214 µs (58x) 1105 µs (53x)
permission check, allowed 1283 µs (61x) 1233 µs (59x) 1104 µs (52x)

Multipliers are against the same app with no authorization at all.

Routes you don't decorate cost nothing, and auth_required() never touches the enforcer — so both stay flat as the policy grows. Middleware runs enforce() on every request, including health checks and public endpoints, so its floor rises with every policy rule you add. On routes that genuinely do check a permission, the decorator is slightly slower: resolving FastAPI dependencies costs ~40-80 µs more than reading scope["user"].

Where that balance tips depends on how much of your traffic needs no authorization:

policy rules unprotected traffic needed for the decorator to win
10 46-50%
100 20-26%
1000 5-15%

Reproduce with task bench:run.

Installation

pip install casbin-fastapi-decorator

Optional extras — install only what you need:

pip install "casbin-fastapi-decorator[file]"     # File policies with hot-reload (recommended)
pip install "casbin-fastapi-decorator[jwt]"      # JWT authentication
pip install "casbin-fastapi-decorator[db]"       # Policies from DB (SQLAlchemy) with hot-reload
pip install "casbin-fastapi-decorator[casdoor]"  # Casdoor OAuth2

Quick start

from contextlib import asynccontextmanager
from fastapi import FastAPI, HTTPException
from casbin_fastapi_decorator import AccessSubject, PermissionGuard
from casbin_fastapi_decorator_file import CachedFileEnforcerProvider

# 1. Providers — regular FastAPI dependencies
async def get_current_user() -> dict:
    return {"sub": "alice", "role": "admin"}

# CachedFileEnforcerProvider loads the enforcer once and hot-reloads
# automatically when model.conf or policy.csv changes on disk.
enforcer_provider = CachedFileEnforcerProvider(
    model_path="model.conf",
    policy_path="policy.csv",
)

# 2. Decorator factory
guard = PermissionGuard(
    user_provider=get_current_user,
    enforcer_provider=enforcer_provider,
    error_factory=lambda user, *rv: HTTPException(403, "Forbidden"),
)

# 3. Wire lifespan to start/stop the file watcher
@asynccontextmanager
async def lifespan(app: FastAPI):
    async with enforcer_provider:
        yield

app = FastAPI(lifespan=lifespan)

# 4. Authentication only
@app.get("/me")
@guard.auth_required()
async def me():
    return {"ok": True}

# 5. Static permission check
@app.get("/articles")
@guard.require_permission("articles", "read")
async def list_articles():
    return []

# 6. Dynamic check — object resolved from request
async def get_article(article_id: int) -> dict:
    return {"id": article_id, "owner": "alice"}

@app.get("/articles/{article_id}")
@guard.require_permission(
    AccessSubject(val=get_article, selector=lambda a: a["owner"]),
    "read",
)
async def read_article(article_id: int):
    return {"article_id": article_id}

Arguments of require_permission are passed to enforcer.enforce(user, *args) in the same order. AccessSubject is resolved via FastAPI DI, then transformed by the selector.

API

PermissionGuard

PermissionGuard(
    user_provider=...,       # FastAPI dependency that returns the current user
    enforcer_provider=...,   # FastAPI dependency that returns a casbin.Enforcer
    error_factory=...,       # callable(user, *rvals) -> Exception
)
Method Description
auth_required() Decorator: authentication only (user_provider must not raise)
require_permission(*args, error_factory=None) Decorator: permission check via enforcer.enforce(user, *args). Optional error_factory overrides the guard-level factory for this route only. Pass a single AnyOf(...) for OR semantics across clauses — see Combining multiple checks.

AccessSubject

AccessSubject(
    val=get_item,                        # FastAPI dependency
    selector=lambda item: item["name"],  # transformation before enforce
)

Wraps a dependency whose value is resolved from the request and passed to the enforcer. By default, selector is identity (lambda x: x).

Combining multiple checks (AND / OR)

AND — stack multiple require_permission() decorators on the same route. Each one must pass, in order, before the route body runs:

@app.get("/gallery/vip")
@guard.require_permission(Domain.GALLERY_EMPLOYEE, subject, Action.READ)
@guard.require_permission(Domain.GALLERY_CRIMINAL, subject, Action.READ)
async def route(): ...

OR — pass a single AnyOf(...) to require_permission(). Each positional argument to AnyOf is a clause (a tuple shaped like require_permission's own *args). The route is allowed as soon as one clause's enforcer.enforce() call succeeds; remaining clauses are skipped:

from casbin_fastapi_decorator import AccessSubject, AnyOf

@app.get("/gallery")
@guard.require_permission(
    AnyOf(
        (Domain.GALLERY_EMPLOYEE, AccessSubject(get_obj_from_role_permissions), Action.READ),
        (Domain.GALLERY_CRIMINAL, AccessSubject(get_obj_from_role_permissions), Action.READ),
    ),
)
async def route(): ...

On denial, error_factory receives (user, clause_1_rvals, clause_2_rvals, ...) — one resolved-values tuple per clause. AnyOf and stacked decorators compose: put require_permission(AnyOf(...)) in a stack with other require_permission(...) calls to express (A or B) and C.

Per-route error responses

Override the guard-level error_factory on specific routes to customize error handling:

def article_not_found_error(user, *resolved_args) -> HTTPException:
    """Return 404 instead of 403 for denied access."""
    return HTTPException(status_code=404, detail="Article not found")

@app.get("/articles/draft")
@guard.require_permission(
    "article", "write",
    error_factory=article_not_found_error,
)
async def read_draft():
    return {"title": "Draft Article"}

When a user without write permission accesses this route, they'll receive a 404 Not Found instead of the default 403 Forbidden, effectively hiding the resource's existence.

File provider

casbin-fastapi-decorator-file — loads the Casbin enforcer once from model.conf + policy.csv and hot-reloads automatically when either file changes on disk (via watchdog).

pip install "casbin-fastapi-decorator[file]"
from casbin_fastapi_decorator_file import CachedFileEnforcerProvider

enforcer_provider = CachedFileEnforcerProvider(
    model_path="casbin/model.conf",
    policy_path="casbin/policy.csv",
)

@asynccontextmanager
async def lifespan(app: FastAPI) -> AsyncGenerator[None, None]:
    async with enforcer_provider:   # starts watchdog
        yield                       # stops watchdog on shutdown

guard = PermissionGuard(
    user_provider=get_current_user,
    enforcer_provider=enforcer_provider,
    error_factory=lambda *_: HTTPException(403, "Forbidden"),
)

Edit policy.csv while the app is running — the enforcer reloads on the next request with zero downtime. The same applies to model.conf changes.

Recommended for all file-based setups. Compared to a plain async def get_enforcer() that returns casbin.Enforcer(...), this provider avoids re-reading files on every request.

See packages/casbin-fastapi-decorator-file/README.md for full API and usage.

JWT provider

casbin-fastapi-decorator-jwt — extracts and validates a JWT from the Bearer header and/or a cookie.

pip install "casbin-fastapi-decorator[jwt]"

See packages/casbin-fastapi-decorator-jwt/README.md for full API and usage.

DB provider

casbin-fastapi-decorator-db — loads Casbin policies from a SQLAlchemy async session with caching and hot-reload.

pip install "casbin-fastapi-decorator[db]"

The enforcer is cached and reloaded automatically when:

  • model.conf changes on disk (watchdog)
  • DB policy rows change — detected by SHA-256 hash, polled every poll_interval seconds (default 30 s)
from casbin_fastapi_decorator_db import DatabaseEnforcerProvider

enforcer_provider = DatabaseEnforcerProvider(
    model_path="casbin/model.conf",
    session_factory=async_session,
    policy_model=Policy,
    policy_mapper=lambda p: (p.sub, p.obj, p.act),
    poll_interval=30.0,  # seconds between DB hash checks
)

@asynccontextmanager
async def lifespan(app: FastAPI) -> AsyncGenerator[None, None]:
    async with enforcer_provider:   # starts watchdog + polling task
        yield

See packages/casbin-fastapi-decorator-db/README.md for full API and usage.

Casdoor provider

casbin-fastapi-decorator-casdoor — Casdoor OAuth2 authentication and remote Casbin policy enforcement.

pip install "casbin-fastapi-decorator[casdoor]"
from casbin_fastapi_decorator_casdoor import CasdoorEnforceTarget, CasdoorIntegration

casdoor = CasdoorIntegration(
    endpoint="http://localhost:8000",
    client_id="...", client_secret="...", certificate=cert,
    org_name="my_org", application_name="my_app",
    target=CasdoorEnforceTarget(
        enforce_id=lambda parsed: f"{parsed['owner']}/my_enforcer",
    ),
)
app.include_router(casdoor.router)   # GET /login, GET /callback, POST /logout
guard = casdoor.create_guard()

CasdoorEnforceTarget selects the Casdoor enforce mode — by enforcer, permission, model, resource, or owner. Values can be static strings or callables resolved from the JWT payload at request time.

POST /logout calls Casdoor's SSO logout endpoint (/api/sso-logout?logoutAll=true) when an access-token cookie is present, then clears local auth cookies.

See packages/casbin-fastapi-decorator-casdoor/README.md for full API, compose pattern, and usage.

Examples

Example Description
examples/core Bearer token auth, plain file-based policies
examples/core-file Bearer token auth, file policies with hot-reload via CachedFileEnforcerProvider
examples/core-jwt JWT auth via JWTUserProvider, file-based policies
examples/core-db Bearer token auth, DB policies with hot-reload via DatabaseEnforcerProvider
examples/core-casdoor Casdoor OAuth2 auth + remote enforcement, facade and compose patterns

Development

Requires Python 3.10+, uv, task.

task install           # uv sync --all-groups + install all packages
task lint              # ruff + ty + bandit for all packages
task tests             # all tests (core + jwt + db + casdoor + file)

Individual package tasks:

task core:lint         task core:test
task jwt:lint          task jwt:test
task db:lint           task db:test         # requires Docker (testcontainers)
task casdoor:lint      task casdoor:test
task file:lint         task file:test

License

MIT

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Authorization decorator factory for FastAPI based on Casbin. No middleware, no extra dependencies in route signatures.

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