Advanced authorization plugin¶

Incoming request¶

For each HTTP/REST request that Orthanc receives, the plugin will issue a set of HTTP POST requests against the Web service that is specified in the configuration file (in the basic configuration file above, the Web service listening at http://localhost:8000/tokens/validate is used). The body of each of those POST requests is a JSON file similar to the following one:

{
  "dicom-uid" : "123ABC",
  "level" : "patient",
  "method" : "get",
  "orthanc-id" : "6eeded74-75005003-c3ae9738-d4a06a4f-6beedeb8",
  "server-id": null,
  "uri": null
}

In this example, the user is accessing an URI that is related to some DICOM resource, namely a patient whose DICOM identifier is 123ABC. In such a case, the following fields will be set in the JSON body:

• The level field specifies which type of resource the user is accessing, according to the DICOM model of the real world. This field can be set to patient, study, series, or instance.
• The method field specifies which HTTP method is used by the to-be-authorized request. It can be set to get, post, delete, or put.
• The dicom-uid field gives the DICOM identifier of the resource that is accessed. If the resource is a patient, this field contains the PatientID DICOM tag. For a study, it contains its StudyInstanceUID. For a series, it contains its SeriesInstanceUID. For an instance, it contains its SOPInstanceUID.
• The orthanc-id field gives the Orthanc identifier of the resource.
• The server-id field contains the value of the WebServiceIdentifier configuration or null if this configuration is not defined. This allows the WebService to identity which Orthanc instance is calling it (new in v 0.3.0).

When the user accesses a lower-level resource in the DICOM hierarchy (a study, a series or an instance), the authorization plugin will issue one separate call to the Web service for each level of the hierarchy. For instance, here are the 3 successive requests that are issued when accessing some series:

{
  "dicom-uid" : "123ABC",
  "level" : "patient",
  "method" : "get",
  "orthanc-id" : "6eeded74-75005003-c3ae9738-d4a06a4f-6beedeb8"
}
{
  "dicom-uid" : "1.3.51.0.1.1.192.168.29.133.1681753.1681732",
  "level" : "study",
  "method" : "get",
  "orthanc-id" : "6e2c0ec2-5d99c8ca-c1c21cee-79a09605-68391d12"
}
{
  "dicom-uid" : "1.3.12.2.1107.5.2.33.37097.2012041612474981424569674.0.0.0",
  "level" : "series",
  "method" : "get",
  "orthanc-id" : "6ca4c9f3-5e895cb3-4d82c6da-09e060fe-9c59f228"
}

It the user is accessing a URI that is not directly related to an individual DICOM resource, the JSON body will look as follows:

{
  "level" : "system",
  "method" : "get",
  "uri" : "/changes"
}

In such a situation, the following fields are set:

• The level field is always set to system.
• The method field is the same as above.
• The uri field provides the URI that was accessed by the user.

Important note: The plugin will transparently parse the URIs of the core REST API of Orthanc, of the Web viewer plugin, of the DICOMweb plugin, and of the whole-slide imaging plugin. Unrecognized URIs (such as those introduced by other plugins) will be handled as a system call. It is possible to introduce parsing support for more plugins by modifying the DefaultAuthorizationParser C++ class in the source code of the plugin.

Expected answer¶

The Web service must answer by sending a JSON file that tells whether the access is granted or not to the user. Here is a sample answer:

{
  "granted": true,
  "validity" : 5
}

Here is a description of these two fields:

• granted tells whether access to the resource is granted (true) or not granted (false). In the case the user is accessing a DICOM resource, the access to all the levels of the hierarchy above this resource must be granted (logical conjunction over the levels).
• validity tells the authorization plugin for how many seconds the result of the Web service must be cached. If set to 0 second, the cache entry will never expire.

Note: The source code of the plugin contains a basic example of such a Web service written in node.js.

Authentication tokens¶

It is obviously desirable to limit access to the resources depending on the user that is logged in. Real-life Web framework such as Django would send the identity of the authenticated user either as an HTTP header, or as an additional argument for GET requests. The authorization plugin allows to forward these authentication tokens to the Web service.

To configure the authentication plugin to use some HTTP header, one must provide the option TokenHttpHeaders the configuration file of Orthanc as follows:

{
  "Name" : "MyOrthanc",
  [...]
  "Authorization" : {
    "WebService" : "http://localhost:8000/",
    "TokenHttpHeaders" : [ "token" ]
  }
}

In such a situation, if some HTTP client issues the following call:

# curl -H 'token: my-token' http://localhost:8042/patients/6eeded74-75005003-c3ae9738-d4a06a4f-6beedeb8

Here is the JSON body the Web service would receive:

{
  "dicom-uid" : "123ABC",
  "level" : "patient",
  "method" : "get",
  "orthanc-id" : "6eeded74-75005003-c3ae9738-d4a06a4f-6beedeb8",
  "token-key" : "token",
  "token-value" : "my-token"
}

Note how the key and the value of the authentication token stored as a HTTP header are forwarded to the Web service.

The same mechanism can be used if the authentication token is provided as some GET argument by setting the TokenGetArguments configuration option:

# curl http://localhost:8042/patients/6eeded74-75005003-c3ae9738-d4a06a4f-6beedeb8?token=my-token
{
  "dicom-uid" : "123ABC",
  "level" : "patient",
  "method" : "get",
  "orthanc-id" : "6eeded74-75005003-c3ae9738-d4a06a4f-6beedeb8",
  "token-key" : "token",
  "token-value" : "my-token"
}

Note 1: It is allowed to provide a list of HTTP tokens or a list of GET arguments in the configuration options. In this case, the authorization plugin will loop over all the available authentication tokens, until it finds one for which the access is granted (logical disjunction over the authentication tokens).

Note 2: The cache entry that remembers whether some access was granted in the past, depends on the value of the token.

Note 3: The support of authentication tokens provided as GET arguments requires a version of Orthanc that is above 1.2.1.