Umbraco-cms: Changing public access settings affects parent and siblings.

[Luksor]

Reproduction

Bug summary

When a node is configured with public access it should be possible to modify a child node to have different public access settings. However it looks like this feature is not working correctly and the modified settings propagate to other nodes as well.

Specifics

• Tested on Umbraco 8.1.0

Steps to reproduce

• Find a content node with child nodes.
• Set group-based public access settings on the parent node.
• Modify public access settings of one of the child nodes.
• Parent and all child nodes are updated instead of just the one child node that was modified.

Expected result

The child node settings should not affect siblings and the parent.

Actual result

Public access settings are propagated to all nodes having that original public access configuration.

[stevemegson]

It's not necessarily a bad thing to be able to edit an existing rule from any page affected by it, but the current behaviour doesn't make it very clear that you're doing that, and it gives you no way to create a new rule for the child node.

Perhaps when you open public access settings for a node which is currently inheriting a rule from an ancestor, you should first get a variation of the "choose how to restrict access" step:

The first option would give you the current editing behaviour, while the other two would create a new rule in the same way as for a node which has no existing protection (or perhaps create a new rule starting from a copy of the inherited settings).

On a bit of a tangent, could we also have a different icon in the tree for nodes which are inheriting protection from an ancestor? Perhaps a faded version of the current icon.

[nul800sebastiaan]

Hi @Luksor - I am not sure if we even want to support multiple levels of public access in ancestors in the tree, or how that is supposed to work right now.

The way I always understood this to work is that there's only 1 public access configuration possible for a parent and all of it's ancestors. I understand you might WANT to do something else on an ancestor but I am not sure if we want to support this scenario.

I'll get back to you on this one after I've discussed it at HQ.

[clausjensen]

We've talked a bit about this and decided that it needs to be split in two different issues.

This first issue will be taking care of the actual bug allowing you to edit parent permissions by editing permissions of one of the affected children.

This should not be possible and we will need to simply disable the option for editing inherited permissions, with a message telling the editor to navigate to the parent and edit this instead.

We however need to consider the scenario of:

• Set permissions on child
• Set permissions on a parent

What happens in this situation currently? - My guess is that it will actually work as expected due to the lookup for a 'permission' just being a recursive lookup through ancestors or current node. But if we decide to simply block out the option of editing a child node's permissions if a parent has anything set, then there would be no way to edit or remove the permissions already set on a child, when a parent node has permissions applied.

The suggested solution (with PR) will need to be added as a new issue/feature request and then it can be discussed how the actual implementation of that should be.

[nul800sebastiaan]

As for the current problem, I think it would be good to fix the bug and not allow updates to public access from the descendant nodes, that is too confusing.

If you'd like to help out fixing this then that would be much appreciated!

As Claus mentioned, the feature request to make more granular permissions should be discussed in a separate issue so we can work out the details first before work can start on it. 👍

[umbrabot]

Hi @Luksor,

We're writing to let you know that we've added the Up For Grabs label to your issue. We feel that this issue is ideal to flag for a community member to work on it. Once flagged here, folk looking for issues to work on will know to look at yours. Of course, please feel free work on this yourself ;-). If there are any changes to this status, we'll be sure to let you know.

For more information about issues and states, have a look at this blog post

Thanks muchly, from your friendly PR team bot :-)

[stevemegson]

What's the expected behaviour after the initial bug fix?

Currently, setting permissions on a parent after a child leaves the child and its descendants with their original permissions, which seems reasonable.

When opening 'Public access' on a child after setting permissions on the parent, I think there are three easy options before considering a possible feature request for a more complex change:

1. Always edit the inherited rule. The current behaviour, which might be what some editors expect but is more likely to be confusing.
2. Always create a new rule for the child. Gives the flexibility to set different permissions on a child, but could be confusing if you expected the current behaviour.
3. Do nothing and display a message saying that setting permissions on a child is not supported when an ancestor already has permissions. Avoids any confusion about what the menu item does, since it does nothing. It's still possible to set up nested permissions, but only by setting up the parent after the child.

Personally, I think option 2 is what I expected to happen.

[kjac]

I agree with @stevemegson here. Since the you can "reverse" this issue by applying access restrictions to children first and then parents, we need to handle the case where children have specific access restrictions regardless.

Perhaps all that's needed is something as simple as a message like _"This item currently inherits public access settings from [Parent]. If you apply new settings you will break this inheritance."_ and then let people apply whatever access restrictions they want? Obviously the initially reported bug should still be fixed then.

[nul800sebastiaan]

Well, egg on my face... It seems like this used to work as following in v7, so let's restore that functionality in v8.

• When you set Public Access for a node, all descendants inherit those Public Access settings
• When you then set up Public Access setting for a child or decendant, that specific child will have it's own Public Access settings and all descendants inherit those Public Access settings

In other words, the current behavior is a bug: parents/ancestors definitely should NOT be updated when you update a child or descendant.

[kjac]

I'll have a look later unless someone beats me to it 😛 I did the V8-ification of public access, so I'm sure it's my fault 🙈

[kjac]

PR in #6118

[nul800sebastiaan]

Fixed in https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco-CMS/pull/6118

Cherry picked for 8.1.4 16ac2c5589dabf65747b95e7122e58b9a82858d3