balana - Powerful Open-Source Engine for Decentralized Authorization Management

Introduction to WSO2 Balana

WSO2 Balana is an open-source project implementing the XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language) specification, building on the groundwork laid by Sun's XACML implementation. Its name "Balana", which means "fortress", aptly describes its role as a robust entitlement engine designed to manage authorization policies external to applications. With its modular framework, Balana assists developers in crafting comprehensive entitlement solutions swiftly and efficiently.

Supported Specifications

Balana boasts support for multiple versions of the XACML specification:

Installation

To incorporate Balana into a project, one must add the following Maven dependency in the project's pom.xml file:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.wso2.balana</groupId>
    <artifactId>org.wso2.balana</artifactId>
    <version>1.1.12</version>
 </dependency>

Getting Started

Creating a default instance of Balana involves setting up a file-based policy repository. Developers can establish this environment using the snippet below:

private static Balana balana;

private static void initBalana() {
    try {
        // Using file based policy repository, setting policy location as a system property
        String policyLocation = (new File(".")).getCanonicalPath() + File.separator + "resources";
        System.setProperty(FileBasedPolicyFinderModule.POLICY_DIR_PROPERTY, policyLocation);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        System.err.println("Cannot locate policy repository");
    }
    // Create default instance of Balana
    balana = Balana.getInstance();
}

Running Samples

To explore Balana through practical examples, users need to:

Install Java SE Development Kit 1.8.
Install Apache Maven 3.x.x, downloadable here.
Clone the repository from Github or download the source.
Execute mvn clean install in the Balana directory.
Navigate to balana/modules/balana-samples/<selected sample>.
Run the sample using the provided script.

The samples available include:

Licensing

While Sun's XACML implementation is available under a specific license which can be viewed here, WSO2's implementation of Balana is released under the Apache2 license.