GrantForge

Unified permission platform · users, roles, menus, APIs, data rows and fields · external data systems

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GrantForge (formerly AuthX) is an open-source (MIT) unified permission platform. It answers two questions in one place: who can do what (functional authorization) and who can see which data (data and field authorization). Permissions are defined, explained and audited in the console, applications integrate through standard protocols, and external data systems such as HDFS are brought into the same policy model through plug-ins and agents.

Features

Area	What it does
Identity & organization	Multi-tenancy, department tree, user groups and positions; CSV bulk import/export; LDAP / Active Directory sign-in and sync, OIDC federation
Account security	Session management and forced sign-out, password policy with lockout, TOTP two-factor authentication with recovery codes, step-up verification for sensitive operations
Functional authorization	Resource catalog (modules, menus, pages, tabs, buttons, APIs), role inheritance, grant matrix, impact analysis before granting
Data permissions	Row-level conditions (self, own department and descendants, specified departments, custom conditions), with read and write controlled separately
Field permissions	Fields can be hidden, masked (email, phone number, ID number) or read-only
Explainability & audit	Permission explanation (where every grant comes from), grant simulation, audit log query and export
Governance	Separation of duty constraints, access requests with approval, periodic access reviews
Application integration	OAuth 2.1 / OIDC authorization server, permission open API, Java (Spring Boot starter) and JavaScript SDK
External systems	Plug-in service types and a policy engine: data services, access policies, agents and access auditing
Delivery	One executable release, Docker image, Compose examples, Helm chart; H2, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server

External-system support today ships the plug-in framework, the generic policy editor, signed policy distribution, access auditing, an HDFS service type and a Hadoop 3.5.0 NameNode agent; the Hive plug-in and agents for other Hadoop versions are still in progress.

How it works: two planes

• Management plane: the GrantForge server (Spring Boot 4.1, Java 17 bytecode) and the Vue 3 console own tenants, accounts, organization, roles, grants, auditing, data services and policies.
• Data plane: agents embedded in the system being protected. An agent pulls Ed25519-signed policy snapshots with its token and caches them locally, decides every access before it happens (denying when no policy is available), and reports access events back for auditing.

Your own systems do not have to follow the HDFS pattern. Regular applications evaluate permissions in-process through the open API or the Spring Boot starter; only systems that must intercept access inside a database, file system or similar store need an agent written against core/grantforge-agent-core.

Integrating your application

• OAuth 2.1 / OpenID Connect: GrantForge is an authorization server, so applications sign users in with it; existing identity sources (LDAP / AD / OIDC) can also be connected.
• Java applications: sdk/grantforge-spring-boot-starter adds @RequirePermission for endpoints, @GrantForgeEntity for data entities, and GrantForgeDataScopes.scope(...) to turn platform data permissions into JPA Specifications.
• Front-end applications: @grantforge/client signs users in with OIDC + PKCE from your own origin and queries their permissions.
• Open API: /api/v1/open/me/authorization, /api/v1/open/me/data-access, /api/v1/open/catalog/data-entities.
• Runnable examples: samples/shop and samples/notes integrate the way a third party would.

Quick start

Java 17 or later is required. The service listens on port 9999 and prints a one-time setup token on first start; open http://127.0.0.1:9999/ in a browser, enter the token and create the first administrator.

# From the release (or build it from source with ./mvnw clean package, output in dist/)
tar -xzf grantforge-release.tar.gz
cd grantforge
bin/startup.sh

# Or with Docker
docker run -p 9999:9999 ghcr.io/devlive-community/grantforge:2026.0.0

# Or with Compose against a database
docker compose -f deploy/compose/postgres.yml up -d

# Or on Kubernetes
helm install grantforge deploy/helm/grantforge \
    --set database.url=jdbc:postgresql://postgresql:5432/grantforge \
    --set database.username=grantforge \
    --set encryptionKey=$(openssl rand -base64 32)

The embedded H2 file database is the default, so no configuration is needed to start. The MySQL driver is not distributed with the release because of its GPL license; put it into drivers/. Installation, first-run setup and your first grant are described in the documentation.

Databases

The default is an embedded H2 file database (${GRANTFORGE_HOME}/data), so no configuration is needed to start. Production deployments switch through environment variables; the schema is managed by Liquibase:

Database	Versions (verified in CI)	GRANTFORGE_DB_URL example
PostgreSQL	14, 17	jdbc:postgresql://host:5432/grantforge
MySQL	8.0, 8.4	jdbc:mysql://host:3306/grantforge (add mysql-connector-j to lib/; its GPL license keeps it out of the release)
MariaDB	10.11, 11.4	jdbc:mariadb://host:3306/grantforge
Oracle	23	jdbc:oracle:thin:@//host:1521/FREEPDB1
SQL Server	2022	jdbc:sqlserver://host:1433;databaseName=grantforge;encrypt=true

Also set GRANTFORGE_DB_USER and GRANTFORGE_DB_PASSWORD; every instance in a cluster must set its own GRANTFORGE_ID_NODE (0-1023).

Project layout

Maven root coordinate: org.devlive.grantforge:grantforge:2026.0.0. Java package prefix: org.devlive.grantforge. Main class: org.devlive.grantforge.server.GrantForge.

core/ contains the server and shared infrastructure, plugins/ contains service type plug-ins loaded by the server, and agents/ contains agents deployed inside the systems they protect. The shared grantforge-agent-core library stays in core/; the HDFS NameNode agent is in agents/grantforge-agent-hdfs.

Module	Responsibility
core/grantforge-server	Spring Boot entry point: REST API, security configuration, open API, and it serves the web console
core/grantforge-web	Vue 3 / TypeScript / Tailwind CSS console
core/grantforge-common	Error codes and problem details, CSV, endpoint access annotations
core/grantforge-persistence	Entities, tenant filtering, TSID, Liquibase, data and field permission SPI
core/grantforge-audit	Audit event recording, querying, retention and archiving
core/grantforge-identity	Tenants, accounts, departments, groups, positions, sign-in and sessions, two-factor authentication, identity sources
core/grantforge-authz	Resource catalog, roles, grants, assignments and evaluation, data and field policies, separation of duty, requests and reviews
core/grantforge-plugin-api / core/grantforge-plugin-host	Service type plug-in contract plus loading, isolation and invocation of plug-ins
core/grantforge-policy-engine	Policy evaluation engine for external systems (Java 8 API, embeddable in agents)
core/grantforge-agent-core	Shared agent code: settings, signed snapshots, access decisions, audit shipping
core/grantforge-service	Data services, policy snapshot signing and distribution, agents and access auditing
core/grantforge-oauth	OAuth 2.1 / OIDC server built on Spring Authorization Server
plugins/grantforge-plugin-hdfs	HDFS service type plug-in: policy management and resource lookup
plugins/grantforge-plugin-example	Example plug-in for a custom service type
agents/grantforge-agent-hdfs	Hadoop 3.5.0 NameNode agent: overlay authorization and access auditing
sdk/grantforge-spring-boot-starter, sdk/grantforge-js	Java and JavaScript SDKs for integrating applications
script/ci, deploy/	CI check scripts (the same ones locally and in CI) and deployment resources (Dockerfile, Compose, Helm)

Operations and observability

• Health probes: /actuator/health/liveness, /actuator/health/readiness (status only, no details; readiness returns 200 once the database is reachable and migrations have run).
• Metrics: /actuator/prometheus (labelled application="grantforge", login required by default; open it to trusted networks with GRANTFORGE_PROMETHEUS_PUBLIC=true).
• Logging: readable text with a request ID per line by default; set LOGGING_STRUCTURED_FORMAT_CONSOLE=ecs (or logstash) for JSON logs.
• Release scripts: bin/startup.sh, shutdown.sh, restart.sh, debug.sh and import-legacy.sh.

Development and verification

Builds need JDK 17 or later (Java 17 bytecode; the policy engine targets Java 8); Error Prone + NullAway enable themselves on JDK 21+. The front end uses Vue 3.5, Tailwind CSS 4, Node.js 22.12+ and pnpm 8.10.2.

# Java build and unit tests (skipping the console build)
./mvnw verify
bash script/ci/java.sh test
bash script/ci/java.sh checkstyle

# Persistence integration tests on a given database (needs Docker, except h2)
bash script/ci/db_integration.sh postgres:17

# Package the release (including the console build) into dist/
./mvnw clean package

# Front-end development and checks
bash script/ci/web.sh install
cd core/grantforge-web && pnpm dev
bash script/ci/web.sh lint

# Sample applications and SDKs
cd sdk/grantforge-js && pnpm install && pnpm build
./mvnw -f samples/pom.xml package -DskipTests

# API contract: regenerate openapi.json and the front-end types after a server change (CI checks both)
./mvnw -DskipFrontend -pl core/grantforge-server -am test -Dtest=OpenApiContractTest \
    -Dsurefire.failIfNoSpecifiedTests=false -Dgrantforge.openapi.update=true
cd core/grantforge-web && pnpm api:generate

# Documentation site (docs/, Next.js + Tailwind CSS)
bash script/ci/docs.sh install
cd docs && pnpm dev                 # http://localhost:3100
bash script/ci/docs.sh check
bash script/docs/screenshots.sh     # regenerate the screenshots with a real service and sample data

# Repository checks (the same ones CI runs)
python3 script/ci/check_license_headers.py
bash script/ci/test_ci_scripts.sh

Links

• Repository
• Documentation: quick start, user guide, integration and technical references, sources in docs/
• Contributing · Code of conduct · Changelog