MS SQL Server: Setting Values for Fields Using Role-Based Column Presets

Introduction

Let's say you want certain fields to have their values set automatically using session variables or fixed values when a row is created/updated with a particular user role.

Hasura GraphQL Engine's column presets let you define role-based values for any field/column. These values can either be a session variable value or a static value.

Column preset restricts mutation access for configured role

Column preset values are not overridable by the user. ie. If a column has a preset defined for a given role, access to the column for the mutation will be restricted for users with that role.

Example: Say we have a field user_id in a table article which is to be set to the id of the user, from the value of the user's session variable whenever a new row is added to the article table.

Step 1: Configure a column preset

Console

Support will be added soon.

CLI

You can set column presets in the tables.yaml file inside the metadata directory:

- table:
    schema: public
    name: article
  insert_permissions:
    - role: user
      permission:
        check: {}
        set:
          user_id: x-hasura-User-Id
        columns:
          - content
          - rating
          - title
        backend_only: false

Apply the Metadata by running:

hasura metadata apply

API

You can add column presets by using the mssql_create_insert_permission metadata API:

POST /v1/metadata HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
X-Hasura-Role: admin

{
  "type" : "mssql_create_insert_permission",
  "args" : {
    "source": "<db_name>",
    "table" : "article",
    "role" : "user",
    "permission" : {
      "check" : {},
      "set":{
        "user_id":"X-Hasura-User-Id"
      },
      "columns":["title", "content", "rating"]
    }
  }
}

Note

To set a column preset for a nested object's column, simply set the corresponding column preset in the remote table.

Step 2: Run an insert mutation

Head to the GraphiQL interface in the Console and try making an insert mutation on the article table with the following headers (to run through this example, don't forget to also grant the user role sufficient permissions to select from the article table):

• X-Hasura-Role --> user (to test the behavior for the configured role)
• X-Hasura-User-Id --> 1 (this is the value we should expect in the user_id field)

As mentioned earlier, you'll notice when you add the X-Hasura-Role header that the field, user_id, is no longer available as the mutation type's field:

Now, if we run the following insert mutation, we'll see that the user_id field is indeed being set with the value passed in the X-Hasura-User-Id variable:

Note

Not passing the configured header will result in a run-time error:

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "path": "$",
      "error": "\"x-hasura-user-id\" header is expected but not found",
      "code": "not-found"
    }
  ]
}

Also see

• MS SQL Server: Setting default values for fields using MS SQL Server defaults