authorization

The authorization configuration lets you control fine-grained access to your GraphQL schema using directives like @authenticated and @requiresScopes. This allows you to restrict which fields authenticated users can access based on their authentication status or specific scopes.

For practical examples and a guide to authorization concepts, see “Authorization” in the documentation.

Directives

Access control is defined within the supergraph schema using the following directives:

• @authenticated - restricts access to authenticated users only
• @requiresScopes(scopes: [[String]]) - restricts access based on specific scopes

Configuration Options

enabled

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

Whether to enable authorization directives processing. Set to false to disable authorization checks entirely.

unauthorized.mode

• Type: string
• Allowed values: "filter" or "reject"
• Default: "filter"

Controls how the router handles unauthorized field access:

• "filter": Remove unauthorized fields and continue processing (returns errors for removed fields)
• "reject": Reject the entire request if any unauthorized fields are accessed

Examples

Filter Mode (Default)

With filter mode, unauthorized fields are silently removed from the operation, but the query continues to execute and return the data the user can access:

authorization:
  directives:
    enabled: true
    unauthorized:
      mode: filter

Request:

query {
  publicData
  me {
    name
    email
  }
}

If the user is not authenticated, the response might look like:

{
  "data": {
    "publicData": "available",
    "me": null
  },
  "errors": [
    {
      "message": "Unauthorized field or type",
      "extensions": {
        "code": "UNAUTHORIZED_FIELD_OR_TYPE",
        "affectedPath": "me"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Reject Mode

With reject mode, if any field is unauthorized, the entire request is rejected:

authorization:
  directives:
    enabled: true
    unauthorized:
      mode: reject

Request (same as above):

query {
  publicData
  me {
    name
    email
  }
}

Response:

{
  "data": null,
  "errors": [
    {
      "message": "Unauthorized field or type",
      "extensions": {
        "code": "UNAUTHORIZED_FIELD_OR_TYPE"
      }
    }
  ]
}