Question

For a particular topic, Is there a way in which "View" access can be denied to user but at the same time allow "Change" access?

The Scenario is given below:

I have a topic that contains the links to various documents. I want the administrator to be able to edit the topic so that he can change the contents of the links (the links contain pointers to various documents). But I don't want the administrator to be able to view the contents of these documents. This is because only certain users can see the contents of this document.

To summarize, the user should be able to edit the topic but not view the contents.

Please let me know. Thanks in advance.

• TWiki version: TWiki20030201
• Perl version: 5.8
• Web server & version: Apache 1.3.27
• Server OS: Windows XP
• Web browser & version: IE 6.0
• Client OS: Windows XP

-- SampturUmashankar - 30 May 2003

Answer

It looks like you want to allow somebody to edit the page, but not be able to read it. If the user can edit the page, then they can read the contents of the page in the edit textbox. From am understanding of your request, you can't do it in the TWiki model.

Now if you mean can the administrator change a page that refers to pages the administrator can't read. Then yes, deny the topic view to the pages being linked to and allow view and edit access to the page that contains the links.

If you mean the page includes (rather than links) other pages that the adminstrator should not see, and you use the twiki INCLUDE mechanism, I am not sure if the include mechanism will honor the twiki access controls. If it does, then the administrator will be able to see and edit the main page, but the included topics will not be visible when the admin views the page.

If you mean something else, then please clarify your problem description.

-- JohnRouillard - 30 May 2003

Hello John,

We are trying to do whatever you have mentioned in your second paragraph.

The same is given here.. "Now if you mean can the administrator change a page that refers to pages the administrator can't read. Then yes, deny the topic view to the pages being linked to and allow view and edit access to the page that contains the links."

But the only difference is that on clicking on that link we are opening up a document. We want to prevent the user to open up the document when he clicks on the link. So clicking on the link does not open up another topic. Had the link been going to a topic, we could have easily controlled by denying the topic view to the pages being linked.

The only solution we can think of at the moment is to open up one more topic on clicking of the link. We should then have the link to the document in this new topic. We can control the access by denying the view to the new topic to the user.

If you can think of some other solution, please let me know.

Thanks very much.

Regards,

Umashankar

-- SampturUmashankar - 02 June 2003

I don't understand why you would want someone to be able to edit a page but not read it. If they can edit it, they can read it in the edit box. If you just want them to be able to change links, maybe you could define the links in some variables and give edit access to the Topic with the variable declarations.

Greg Meyer -- TWikiGuest - 08 Jun 2003

Thanks Greg. This is precisely what we have done. Thanks for your inputs.

Umashankar -- SampturUmashankar - 09 June 2003