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<manualpage metafile="access.xml.meta">
<parentdocument href="./">How-To / Tutorials</parentdocument>

<title>Access Control</title>

<summary>
    <p>Access control refers to any means of controlling access to any
    resource. This is separate from <a
    href="auth.html">authentication and authorization</a>.</p>
</summary>

<section id="related"><title>Related Modules and Directives</title>

    <p>Access control can be done by several different modules. The most
    important of these are <module>mod_authz_core</module> and
    <module>mod_authz_host</module>. Also discussed in this document
    is access control using <module>mod_rewrite</module>.</p>

</section>

<section id="host"><title>Access control by host</title>
    <p>
    If you wish to restrict access to portions of your site based on the
    host address of your visitors, this is most easily done using
    <module>mod_authz_host</module>.
    </p>

    <p>The <directive module="mod_authz_core">Require</directive>
    provides a variety of different ways to allow or deny access to
    resources. In conjunction with the <directive
    module="mod_authz_core">RequireAll</directive>, <directive
    module="mod_authz_core">RequireAny</directive>, and <directive
    module="mod_authz_core">RequireNone</directive> directives, these
    requirements may be combined in arbitrarily complex ways, to enforce
    whatever your access policy happens to be.</p>

    <note type="warning"><p>
    The <directive module="mod_access_compat">Allow</directive>,
    <directive module="mod_access_compat">Deny</directive>, and
    <directive module="mod_access_compat">Order</directive> directives,
    provided by <module>mod_access_compat</module>, are deprecated and
    will go away in a future version. You should avoid using them, and
    avoid outdated tutorials recommending their use.
    </p></note>

    <p>The usage of these directives is:</p>

    <highlight language="config">
Require host address
Require ip ip.address
    </highlight>

    <p>In the first form, <var>address</var> is a fully qualified
    domain name (or a partial domain name); you may provide multiple
    addresses or domain names, if desired.</p>

    <p>In the second form, <var>ip.address</var> is an IP address, a
    partial IP address, a network/netmask pair, or a network/nnn CIDR
    specification. Either IPv4 or IPv6 addresses may be used.</p>

    <p>See <a href="../mod/mod_authz_host.html#requiredirectives">the
    mod_authz_host documentation</a> for further examples of this
    syntax.</p>

    <p>You can insert <code>not</code> to negate a particular requirement.
    Note, that since a <code>not</code> is a negation of a value, it cannot 
    be used by itself to allow or deny a request, as <em>not true</em>
    does not constitute <em>false</em>. Thus, to deny a visit using a negation,
    the block must have one element that evaluates as true or false.
    For example, if you have someone spamming your message
    board, and you want to keep them out, you could do the
    following:</p>

    <highlight language="config">
&lt;RequireAll&gt;
    Require all granted
    Require not ip 10.252.46.165
&lt;/RequireAll&gt;
    </highlight>

    <p>Visitors coming from that address (<code>10.252.46.165</code>)
    will not be able to see the content covered by this directive. If, 
    instead, you have a machine name, rather than an IP address, you 
    can use that.</p>

    <highlight language="config">
Require not host <var>host.example.com</var>
    </highlight>

    <p>And, if you'd like to block access from an entire domain,
    you can specify just part of an address or domain name:</p>

    <highlight language="config">
Require not ip 192.168.205
Require not host phishers.example.com moreidiots.example
Require not host gov
    </highlight>

    <p>Use of the <directive
    module="mod_authz_core">RequireAll</directive>, <directive
    module="mod_authz_core">RequireAny</directive>, and <directive
    module="mod_authz_core">RequireNone</directive> directives may be
    used to enforce more complex sets of requirements.</p>

</section>

<section id="env"><title>Access control by arbitrary variables</title>

    <p>Using the <directive type="section" module="core">If</directive>,
    you can allow or deny access based on arbitrary environment
    variables or request header values. For example, to deny access
    based on user-agent (the browser type) you might do the
    following:</p>

    <highlight language="config">
&lt;If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} == 'BadBot'"&gt;
    Require all denied
&lt;/If&gt;
    </highlight>

    <p>Using the <directive module="mod_authz_core">Require</directive>
    <code>expr</code> syntax, this could also be written as:</p>


    <highlight language="config">
Require expr %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} != 'BadBot'
    </highlight>

    <note><title>Warning:</title>
    <p>Access control by <code>User-Agent</code> is an unreliable technique,
    since the <code>User-Agent</code> header can be set to anything at all,
    at the whim of the end user.</p>
    </note>

    <p>See <a href="../expr.html">the expressions document</a> for a
    further discussion of what expression syntaxes and variables are
    available to you.</p>

</section>

<section id="rewrite"><title>Access control with mod_rewrite</title>

    <p>The <code>[F]</code> <directive
    module="mod_rewrite">RewriteRule</directive> flag causes a 403 Forbidden
    response to be sent. Using this, you can deny access to a resource based
    on arbitrary criteria.</p>

    <p>For example, if you wish to block access to a resource between 8pm
    and 7am, you can do this using <module>mod_rewrite</module>.</p>

    <highlight language="config">
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond "%{TIME_HOUR}" "&gt;=20" [OR]
RewriteCond "%{TIME_HOUR}" "&lt;07"
RewriteRule "^/fridge"     "-" [F]
    </highlight>

    <p>This will return a 403 Forbidden response for any request after 8pm
    or before 7am. This technique can be used for any criteria that you wish
    to check. You can also redirect, or otherwise rewrite these requests, if
    that approach is preferred.</p>

    <p>The <directive type="section" module="core">If</directive> directive,
    added in 2.4, replaces many things that <module>mod_rewrite</module> has
    traditionally been used to do, and you should probably look there first
    before resorting to mod_rewrite.</p>

</section>

<section id="moreinformation"><title>More information</title>

    <p>The <a href="../expr.html">expression engine</a> gives you a
    great deal of power to do a variety of things based on arbitrary
    server variables, and you should consult that document for more
    detail.</p>

    <p>Also, you should read the <module>mod_authz_core</module>
    documentation for examples of combining multiple access requirements
    and specifying how they interact.</p>

    <p>See also the <a href="auth.html">Authentication and Authorization</a>
    howto.</p>
</section>

</manualpage>
