quick-acl

Tiny, zero-dependency ACL utility for string-based permissions. Keep your access rules in plain JSON, load them into memory, and ask one simple question: “does this subject have this permission?”

Features

• Minimal surface area: ACL.add, ACL.grants, ACL.toJSON.
• Works with any permission strings; no enums or magic constants.
• Ships with TypeScript definitions for IntelliSense without changing your code.
• Stateless persistence: serialize to JSON, store anywhere, hydrate back.

Install

npm install quick-acl

Usage

import { ACL } from "quick-acl";

// Seed from JSON (e.g., database, file, KV)
const acl = new ACL([
  { sub: "user-123", permissions: ["read", "write"] },
  { sub: "service-api", permissions: ["read"] },
]);

// Check access
if (acl.grants("user-123", "write")) {
  // do the thing
}

// Mutate at runtime
acl.add({ sub: "auditor", permissions: ["read", "export"] });

// Persist for later
const snapshot = acl.toJSON(); // plain JSON array

API

• new ACL(documents?: AccessDocumentJSON[]) create an ACL from existing JSON (defaults to empty).
• add(document: AccessDocumentJSON) add or replace a subject’s permissions.
• grants(subject: string, action: string): boolean returns true when the permission exists.
• toJSON(): AccessDocumentJSON[] serialize for storage or transport.

AccessDocumentJSON is { sub: string; permissions: string[] }. Permissions are free-form strings—use any naming that fits your system.

Types & IntelliSense

Type definitions live in types/index.d.ts and are wired via the package exports. Both JavaScript and TypeScript consumers get autocompletion for ACL out of the box; no extra config required.

Tests

npm test

Benchmarks

npm run bench

Benchmarks use the built-in benchmarks/bench.js script. They measure adds, lookups, and serialization on a representative dataset; adjust sizes inside the script to match your workload.

Design notes

• No validation or normalization of permission names—bring your own conventions.
• In-memory by design; persistence is your responsibility via toJSON().
• Explicitly minimal: no roles, hierarchies, or conditionals. Compose those on top if you need them.