Table of Contents

Overview

UH Groupings uses Grouper behind the scenes to implement the concept of a grouping. This document specifies the Grouper operations that can be performed on a grouping.

Grouping Roles and Permissions

User Type	Description	Can use hawaii.edu/uhgroupings to perform these operations:
Grouping Superuser	Any person who has been designated as a Grouper administrator.	Can do everything in UH Grouper (and therefore UH Groupings)
Grouping Owner	Any person who is responsible for a grouping. The first owner requests for the creation of a grouping. That request must specify the basis and destination (if any) of the grouping.	Can designate other people as Grouping Owners. Can add or delete people from the include and exclude groups. Can specify whether opt-in or opt-out is allowed for the grouping. Can enable or disable membership publication to a LISTSERV list for grouping Cannot change the basis using hawaii.edu/uhgroupings. Must request these changes or it can be done through the API described on this page.
Grouping Member	Any person who is a member of a grouping, regardless of whether the membership comes from the basis or the include group.	Can opt in or opt out of a grouping, assuming the grouping owner allowed it
Application Account	A special username that is used by an application to interact with UH Grouper (and therefore, UH Groupings). Grouper permissions are granted based on the needs of the application.	N/A, an application account can access whatever Grouper resources and perform whatever operations it has been granted permissions for.

Anatomy of a Grouping

Typically you would not need to create the underlying components described below. When we receive a grouping request, we will implement them all for you.

We expect that most applications would only need to deal with a grouping's include or exclude group.

All groupings must be created under hawaii.edu:custom:<org> or a subdirectory under that. We'll describe the Grouper components that make up a grouping by using a manoa-math-club grouping example. Remember that a colon delimits a folder, so we'll notate them in bold and ending with a colon:

hawaii.edu:						Top-level folder for all Grouper groups
	custom:					All groupings must be inside custom: subfolder
		uhm:				Organize grouping by <org> code. We will create it under the uhm folder
			manoa-math-club			The grouping itself. It is a composite group defined as: hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club:basis+include relative complement hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club:exclude
			manoa-math-club:			A folder holding all artifacts that implement the grouping. Every grouping has a folder with the same name as the grouping.
				basis		The basis of the grouping. It can be empty, it can have one or more groups as members, or it can implement a complex group expression. A basis is typically built from the UH Group Store. Examples: Simple basis: This basis group has zero or more groups as members, e.g. it has this one member group: hawaii.edu:auto:sis:registration:MAN:MATH:140:86212:201430:enrolled Complex basis: This basis group has one member, hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club:basis:100, which is a composite group that implements a complex group expression. See below.
				basis:		If the basis is a complex group expression, we will need to create intermediate groups that represent each group operation. Such groups go into this folder.
					100	A composite group that represents a complex basis that is implemented by operations on the 101, 102, etc. groups below. For example, this group is a composite group defined as hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club:basis:101 relative complement hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club:basis:102
					101	This could be a composite defined as hawaii.edu:auto:sis:registration:MAN:MATH:111:85029:201430:enrolled union hawaii.edu:auto:sis:registration:MAN:MATH:112:82784:201430:enrolled
					102	This could be another composite defined as hawaii.edu:menu:any-dataOrigin:aff:any-org:faculty union hawaii.edu:menu:any-dataOrigin:aff:any-org:staff
				include		The grouping's include group.
				exclude		The grouping's exclude group.
				owners		A group tracking all owners of the grouping
				basis+include		Every grouping has this. It is the composite group that implements the "basis union include" portion of the grouping.

Grouper web services

All UH Grouping operations are performed using Grouper web services. You will need to become familiar with it:
- Grouper API

Application account

If you will be using WS to read from or write to your grouping, make sure your Grouper application account has been granted the following privileges:
- View and Read privileges on the grouping itself
- Update privileges on the grouping's include and exclude subgroups. This means your application account is also considered an owner for the grouping.

Checking if a person is a member of a grouping

Determine the full path to the group that represents the grouping itself
- e.g. hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club

Use this Grouper web service to check that the group has the UH Number of the person as a member:

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Has+Member

e.g. to check that UH Number 11111111 is a member of hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club

HTTP request (we'll be using the RESTful XML interface throughout our examples)
- GET https://grouper.hawaii.edu/grouper-ws/servicesRest/xml/v2_1_005/groups/hawaii.edu%3Acustom%3Auhm%3Amanoa-math-club/members/11111111
- Note how we had to URL-encode the colons in the group path.

HTTP response contains this XML (skipped some attributes to keep this example uncluttered)

<WsHasMemberLiteResult>

 <wsGroup>
  <extension>manoa-math-club</extension>
  <typeOfGroup>group</typeOfGroup>
  <displayExtension>manoa-math-club</displayExtension>
  <description>UH Manoa Math Enthusiasts</description>
  <displayName>hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club</displayName>
  <name>hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club</name>
  <uuid>506f934c821459aee4</uuid>
 </wsGroup>

 <resultMetadata>
  <resultCode>IS_NOT_MEMBER</resultCode>
  <resultMessage> (some long message useful for Grouper debugging) </resultMessage>
  <success>T</success>
 </resultMetadata>

 <responseMetadata>
  <resultWarnings></resultWarnings>
  <millis>216</millis>
  <serverVersion>2.1.5</serverVersion>
 </responseMetadata>

 <wsSubject>
  <resultCode>SUCCESS</resultCode>
  <success>T</success>
  <id>11111111</id>
  <name>John M Doe</name>
  <sourceId>UH core LDAP</sourceId>
 </wsSubject>

</WsHasMemberLiteResult>

Adding or deleting people from the include or exclude groups

It is recommended that everyone use https://www.hawaii.edu/uhgroupings to manage every aspect of a grouping.

If you must write code to manipulate the membership of the grouping's include and exclude groups, here is how you do it:

Special considerations before modifying an include or exclude group:
- Who is performing the addition or deletion from the include and exclude groups? If it as a grouping owner, you may proceed.
- Is your application opting in or out on behalf of a grouping member? If so, you should check whether the owner allowed that.
Determine the full path to the grouping's include and exclude groups. Simply append :include or :exclude to the grouping path, e.g.
- hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club:include
- hawaii.edu:custom:uhm:manoa-math-club:exclude
Use these Grouper web service to add or delete members from the include or exclude groups.
- https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Add+Member
- https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Delete+Member
REQUIRED: set this Grouper attribute to the current date and time, but truncate the seconds portion:
- - The attribute name is uh-settings:attributes:for-groups:last-modified:yyyymmddThhmm
  - The attribute name in the web service call is referred to as wsAttributeDefNameName. See example below.
  - Set the attribute for the include or exclude group you are modifying, not the grouping path itself.
- Use the YYYYMMDDTHHMM format for the attribute value, e.g.
  - 20140315T1915 (March 15, 2014 7:15:59 PM, note how we truncated the seconds, even if this should have been rounded to 7:16 PM)
- Please make sure your clock is synchronized with a time server.
- Use this Grouper web service to assign the attribute:
  - https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Assign+Attributes
  - Example:
    POST https://grouper.hawaii.edu/grouper-ws/servicesRest/json/v2_2_002/attributeAssignments { "WsRestAssignAttributesLiteRequest": { "wsAttributeDefNameName":"uh-settings:attributes:for-groups:last-modified:yyyymmddThhmm", "attributeAssignType":"group", "valueSystem":"20201231T1345", "wsOwnerGroupName":"hawaii.edu:custom:your:grouping:path:include-or-exclude", "attributeAssignValueOperation":"replace_values", "attributeAssignOperation":"assign_attr" } }
- A future version of Grouper will support RabbitMQ messaging, and we should then do away with this timestamp requirement.

Reading attributes of group members

The following attributes are available when retrieving the members of a group:

uid, uhuuid, cn, sn, givenName, displayName, uhOrgAffiliation, eduPersonAffiliation, eduPersonOrgDN, uhScopedHomeOrg

Multi-valued attributes will be returned as a single string with all values delimited by three vertical bars "|||". THIS APPLIES ONLY TO THE Grouper API. Do not expect this format to appear in other services such as UH Login or LDAP.

Example:

POST https://grouper.hawaii.edu/grouper-ws/servicesRest/xml/v2_2_002/groups
<WsRestGetMembersRequest>
 <wsGroupLookups>
  <WsGroupLookup>
   <groupName>path:to:your:grouping</groupName>
  </WsGroupLookup>
 </wsGroupLookups>
   <includeSubjectDetail>T</includeSubjectDetail>
 <subjectAttributeNames>
   <string>eduPersonAffiliation</string>
   <string>eduPersonOrgDN</string>
 </subjectAttributeNames>
</WsRestGetMembersRequest>

returns:

<WsGetMembersResults>

 <subjectAttributeNames>
  <string>eduPersonAffiliation</string>
  <string>eduPersonOrgDN</string>
  <string>uid</string>
  <string>cn</string>
  <string>sn</string>
  <string>givenName</string>
  <string>displayName</string>
  <string>eduPersonAffiliation</string>
  <string>eduPersonOrgDN</string>
 </subjectAttributeNames>

 ...

 <results>
  <WsGetMembersResult>
   ...
   <wsSubjects>
    <WsSubject>
     <resultCode>SUCCESS</resultCode>
     <success>T</success>
     <id>99999999</id>
     <name>First Last</name>
     <sourceId>UH core LDAP</sourceId>
     <attributeValues>
      <string>staff</string>
      <string>uhm</string>
      <string>username</string>
      <string>First Last</string>
      <string>Last</string>
      <string>First</string>
      <string>First Last</string>
      <string>staff|||student</string>
      <string>uhsystem|||uhm</string>
     </attributeValues>
    </WsSubject>
...

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