In MAF, is there a way to search content that you don't have a subscription to?

Subscriptions are set up against collection sets.

When we search within MAF, we search a collection set. To search the collection set, we need to have a subscription for it.

If we try to view a document, the AccessControlService requests a list of all collection sets that can see the document. Each collection set is checked for FLATRATE access, then for PPV access, otherwise it's No Access.

The issue is that, because the document is visible via the collection set that is searched, it is therefore also available to be viewed.

I've been asked if we can provide a feature that would allow a user to search all content, but would block access to the documents that they are not subscribed to - essentially a separation of search access control and document view access control.

Is anyone doing this on MAF, or have any suggestions on how we could approach this?

Many thanks.

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Enrique Molinari

David, yes, there is a way. It was used for WLDK (which was sold later).

On Search Templates, you have an element called access-control-ds which, if its complete, it will be used for access control instead of using the coll-set for searching. You need to give permissions to all of your customers to that collset (lets say PUBLIC-SEARCH-CS), and be sure your documents are not contained in this collectionset. This PUBLIC-SEARCH-CS will not be a real Novus CS, it is just a PrismSec Resource. You will need to inform Online Charges about this, because with this approach you will be searching on real collectionsets that you might not have access to. So, OC needs to be aware of this, and make some changes in the configuration.

Dave Hallam

Many thanks Enrique - I'll give that a shot.

Enrique Molinari

No problem. Let me know if I can help.

Alan Phillips

Hi Dave - see also subscription TOC under the Books tab on WLUK. Users can select books to search where the content is outside their subscription but available through PPV. Accessing results from books outside of subscription presents the PPV charge screen.

Dave Hallam

Hi Alan - thanks for the comment. Specifically what they are looking for is the ability to search Books on WLIE from the homepage - including those that are neither FLATRATE nor PPV. So even if the user has no Books subs at all, they will still be able to search - but not view.

Alan Phillips

Sure we had this recently where we were looking to restrict access to some new content. Our approach was to include it in uk-searchall, the problem was then the opposite to what you describe - that content would appear that couldn't then be accessed. Is there a chance that in UK we're not using AccessControlService?

Dave Hallam

On WLUK, Search uses OnDemandAccessControl which is checked from AbstractSearchAction:127 and uses PrismOnDemandAccessControlFactory.checkPermission()

Document access uses the same PrismOnDemandAccessControlFactory from the session which is passed to the AccessControlService instance to obtain a list of collection sets that have visibility of the document and then use the PrismOnDemandAccessControlFactory to check permissions on each, ref: RetrieveDocumentAction:689.

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