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feat: include authz course + org role grants in Meilisearch access filter - #39073

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feat: include authz course + org role grants in Meilisearch access filter#39073
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WGU-Open-edX:tpayne/fix-meilisearch-access-ids-authz

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@wgu-taylor-payne wgu-taylor-payne commented Sep 2, 2026

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Description

Studio search is powered by Meilisearch. On each request to the Studio search token endpoint (GET /api/content_search/v2/studio/), get_access_ids_for_request / _get_meili_access_filter build the per-user tenant-token filter that Meilisearch enforces server-side. The filter has two clauses: org IN [<org short_names>] OR access_id IN [<SearchAccess ids>]. Until now both clauses were built from legacy roles only — CourseStaffRole / CourseInstructorRole for the access_id (per-course) clause, and OrgStaffRole / OrgInstructorRole for the org clause.

Users who hold an authz-only course role — course_editor or course_auditor granted through openedx-authz, with no corresponding legacy CourseAccessRole row — were therefore invisible to the filter, and their courses returned zero results in the global Studio search modal (search icon / Cmd+K) and the "Review Content Updates" tab on the Library Updates page (/course/{id}/libraries), which uses Meilisearch to look up component details.

This change fixes both clauses:

Per-course grants (access_id clause): a new _get_authz_course_keys helper unions the user's per-course authz role assignments (CourseOverviewData scope) into the access_id filter when AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG is enabled. The flag is a CourseWaffleFlag, so the check is applied per course — a deployment running the flag globally-off with per-course or per-org overrides still resolves correctly.

Org-wide (glob) grants (org clause): an authz course role can also be granted at an org-wide scope, e.g. course-v1:Org+*, which surfaces as an OrgCourseOverviewGlobData scope rather than a per-course CourseOverviewData scope. That grant means "all courses in this org", so it was missed by both clauses — the per-course helper only looks at CourseOverviewData, and the legacy org clause only knows legacy org roles. A new get_authz_org_keys helper resolves these glob grants to org short_names and unions them into _get_user_orgs, so they land in the org IN [...] clause — one entry per org, mirroring how legacy org staff roles are handled and avoiding a per-course access_id fan-out that would burn slots against the JWT size cap (MAX_ACCESS_IDS_IN_FILTER). Because an org-wide grant is not tied to a single course, its flag gate is resolved at the org tier: an org override (force-on/force-off) takes precedence, otherwise the global switch — a per-course override cannot gate an org-wide grant.

Note that the authz→legacy compat layer already bridges course_staffstaff and course_admininstructor (roles with a legacy twin), so those grants were already reaching the filter; the load-bearing cases here are course_editor / course_auditor, which have no legacy twin and are dropped by compat. Both helpers query purely by scope type and are role-agnostic — inclusion is pure widening into an OR filter (you can only gain search on a course/org you already hold a role on), the same safety posture as the fail-open behavior below.

Both lookups fail open: a DatabaseError from the authz/Casbin backend is logged and degrades to legacy-role access rather than returning a 500, while any unexpected exception propagates so real bugs surface. A non-course scope key (e.g. a library scope) appearing in the per-course query is skipped via InvalidKeyError.

Impacted user roles: Course Author (editors/auditors who rely on authz roles, at course or org scope), Operator (behavior is gated behind AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG).

Supporting information

Testing instructions

  1. Enable AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG (globally, or as a per-course / per-org override for the course/org under test).
  2. Create a user with an authz course_editor (or course_auditor) role on a course, and no legacy CourseStaffRole/CourseInstructorRole on it.
  3. As that user, open the global Studio search modal and search for content in that course — the course's content now appears (previously: zero results).
  4. Repeat with an org-wide grant: assign an authz course_editor/course_auditor at an org-glob scope (e.g. course-v1:Org+*), enable the flag for that org, and confirm search returns that org's content via the org IN [...] clause (previously: zero results).
  5. Open the course's Library Updates page → "Review Content Updates" tab and confirm component details resolve.
  6. Automated: pytest openedx/core/djangoapps/content/search/tests/test_models.py openedx/core/djangoapps/content/search/tests/test_views.py — see StudioSearchAuthzAccessTest (per-course: authz-only user sees courses with flag on, omit_orgs applies, flag-off excludes, DatabaseError swallowed, unexpected error propagates, unparseable scope skipped, legacy+authz de-duplicate) and StudioSearchAuthzOrgAccessTest (org-glob: org grant lands in the org clause, org-override forces on when the flag is globally off).

Deadline

None.

Other information

  • Feature-flagged. Behavior only changes when AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG resolves enabled for a given course or org; with the flag off everywhere and no overrides, the filter is unchanged from today.
  • Performance / follow-up (not blocking): the authz assignments are fetched and then flag-filtered. get_user_role_assignments_per_scope_type eagerly expands each role's implicit permissions, but these helpers only read scope.external_key / scope.org and discard the permissions — wasted work for users with many assignments. The computation runs once per token fetch (not per keystroke — the frontend reuses the minted tenant token for subsequent queries). A scopes-only authz API, and/or caching the computed access set with an explicit invalidation contract on role/flag change, would be the clean optimization; both are intentionally left out of this correctness fix.
  • Org-tier flag resolution: CourseWaffleFlag.is_enabled has no public org-only entry point, so get_authz_org_keys reads the org override directly (WaffleFlagOrgOverrideModel.override_value) and falls back to the global switch. If an org-only public flag API is added later, this direct read should be migrated to it.
  • No database migrations.

@openedx-webhooks openedx-webhooks added open-source-contribution PR author is not from Axim or 2U core contributor PR author is a Core Contributor (who may or may not have write access to this repo). labels Sep 2, 2026
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Thanks for the pull request, @wgu-taylor-payne!

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@github-project-automation github-project-automation Bot moved this to Needs Triage in Contributions Sep 2, 2026
@wgu-taylor-payne
wgu-taylor-payne force-pushed the tpayne/fix-meilisearch-access-ids-authz branch from 66be8d2 to 5d245c8 Compare September 2, 2026 21:30
…lter

get_access_ids_for_request built the Meilisearch tenant-token filter from
legacy CourseStaffRole/CourseInstructorRole only, so users holding an
authz-only course role (course_editor / course_auditor with no legacy
twin) were excluded from the search access filter. Their courses returned
zero results in the global Studio search modal and the Library Updates
"Review Content Updates" tab. This is openedx-authz#417.

Add _get_authz_course_keys to union the user's per-course authz role
assignments (CourseOverviewData scope) into the access_id filter clause,
gated per-course on AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG so global-off deployments
with per-course/org overrides still resolve correctly.

Also handle org-wide (glob) authz grants, e.g. course-v1:Org+*, which
surface as an OrgCourseOverviewGlobData scope rather than a per-course
scope and so were missed by both filter clauses -- the same openedx#417 gap for
the org case. Add get_authz_org_keys to resolve org-glob grants to org
short_names and union them into _get_user_orgs, landing them in the
org IN [...] clause (one entry per org, mirroring legacy org staff roles
and avoiding per-course access_id fan-out against the JWT size cap).
Gate each org on the flag's org-override-or-global resolution, since a
per-course override cannot gate an org-wide grant.

The authz lookups fail open on a DatabaseError (logged, empty set) so
search degrades to legacy access rather than 500-ing; any other error
propagates. Scope parsing is narrowed to InvalidKeyError so a non-course
authz scope (e.g. a library) is skipped rather than mishandled.

Closes: openedx/openedx-authz#417
@wgu-taylor-payne
wgu-taylor-payne force-pushed the tpayne/fix-meilisearch-access-ids-authz branch from 5d245c8 to a65995b Compare September 8, 2026 22:40
@wgu-taylor-payne wgu-taylor-payne changed the title feat: include authz course role assignments in Meilisearch access_ids feat: include authz course + org role grants in Meilisearch access filter Sep 8, 2026
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Studio search (Meilisearch) does not include courses for authz-only users

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