An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data https://datasette.io
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Simon Willison 18fd373a8f
New PermissionSQL.restriction_sql mechanism for actor restrictions
Implement INTERSECT-based actor restrictions to prevent permission bypass

Actor restrictions are now implemented as SQL filters using INTERSECT rather
than as deny/allow permission rules. This ensures restrictions act as hard
limits that cannot be overridden by other permission plugins or config blocks.

Previously, actor restrictions (_r in actor dict) were implemented by 
generating permission rules with deny/allow logic. This approach had a 
critical flaw: database-level config allow blocks could bypass table-level 
restrictions, granting access to tables not in the actor's allowlist.

The new approach separates concerns:

- Permission rules determine what's allowed based on config and plugins
- Restriction filters limit the result set to only allowlisted resources
- Restrictions use INTERSECT to ensure all restriction criteria are met
- Database-level restrictions (parent, NULL) properly match all child tables

Implementation details:

- Added restriction_sql field to PermissionSQL dataclass
- Made PermissionSQL.sql optional to support restriction-only plugins
- Updated actor_restrictions_sql() to return restriction filters instead of rules
- Modified SQL builders to apply restrictions via INTERSECT and EXISTS clauses

Closes #2572
2025-11-03 14:17:51 -08:00
.github Ported setup.py to pyproject.toml (#2555) 2025-10-30 10:41:41 -07:00
datasette New PermissionSQL.restriction_sql mechanism for actor restrictions 2025-11-03 14:17:51 -08:00
demos Fixed an unnecessary f-string 2024-02-04 10:15:21 -08:00
docs More upgrade tips, written by Claude Code 2025-11-02 12:02:45 -08:00
tests New PermissionSQL.restriction_sql mechanism for actor restrictions 2025-11-03 14:17:51 -08:00
.coveragerc Configure code coverage, refs #841, #843 2020-06-13 13:48:23 -07:00
.dockerignore Build Dockerfile with SpatiaLite 5, refs #1249 2021-03-26 21:27:40 -07:00
.git-blame-ignore-revs Ignore Black commits in git blame, refs #1716 2022-04-22 14:58:46 -07:00
.gitattributes New explicit versioning mechanism 2020-10-28 20:38:15 -07:00
.gitignore Ported setup.py to pyproject.toml (#2555) 2025-10-30 10:41:41 -07:00
.isort.cfg Used isort to re-order my imports 2018-05-14 00:04:23 -03:00
.prettierrc .prettierrc, refs #1166 2020-12-31 13:25:44 -08:00
.readthedocs.yaml Build docs with 3.11 on ReadTheDocs 2023-05-07 11:44:27 -07:00
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md Add code of conduct again 2022-03-15 08:38:42 -07:00
codecov.yml codecov should not be blocking 2020-07-02 21:29:32 -07:00
Dockerfile Upgrade Docker images to Python 3.11, closes #1853 2022-10-25 12:04:53 -07:00
Justfile upgrade-1.0a20.md, refs #2564 2025-10-31 19:13:41 -07:00
LICENSE Initial commit 2017-10-22 17:39:03 -07:00
MANIFEST.in Include LICENSE in sdist (#1043) 2020-10-23 13:54:34 -07:00
package-lock.json Reformat JavaScript files with Prettier (#2517) 2025-10-20 16:41:09 -07:00
package.json Reformat JavaScript files with Prettier (#2517) 2025-10-20 16:41:09 -07:00
pyproject.toml Enable MyST Markdown docs, port events.rst, refs #2565 2025-10-31 16:38:04 -07:00
pytest.ini New allowed_resources_sql plugin hook and debug tools (#2505) 2025-10-08 14:27:51 -07:00
README.md Replace Glitch with Codespaces, closes #2488 2025-05-28 19:17:22 -07:00
ruff.toml Use ruff to upgrade Optional[x] to x | None 2025-10-26 10:50:29 -07:00
setup.cfg New explicit versioning mechanism 2020-10-28 20:38:15 -07:00
test-in-pyodide-with-shot-scraper.sh Introduce new /$DB/-/query endpoint, soft replaces /$DB?sql=... (#2363) 2024-07-15 10:33:51 -07:00

Datasette

PyPI Changelog Python 3.x Tests Documentation Status License docker: datasette discord

An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data

Datasette is a tool for exploring and publishing data. It helps people take data of any shape or size and publish that as an interactive, explorable website and accompanying API.

Datasette is aimed at data journalists, museum curators, archivists, local governments, scientists, researchers and anyone else who has data that they wish to share with the world.

Explore a demo, watch a video about the project or try it out on GitHub Codespaces.

Want to stay up-to-date with the project? Subscribe to the Datasette newsletter for tips, tricks and news on what's new in the Datasette ecosystem.

Installation

If you are on a Mac, Homebrew is the easiest way to install Datasette:

brew install datasette

You can also install it using pip or pipx:

pip install datasette

Datasette requires Python 3.8 or higher. We also have detailed installation instructions covering other options such as Docker.

Basic usage

datasette serve path/to/database.db

This will start a web server on port 8001 - visit http://localhost:8001/ to access the web interface.

serve is the default subcommand, you can omit it if you like.

Use Chrome on OS X? You can run datasette against your browser history like so:

 datasette ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History --nolock

Now visiting http://localhost:8001/History/downloads will show you a web interface to browse your downloads data:

Downloads table rendered by datasette

metadata.json

If you want to include licensing and source information in the generated datasette website you can do so using a JSON file that looks something like this:

{
    "title": "Five Thirty Eight",
    "license": "CC Attribution 4.0 License",
    "license_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "source": "fivethirtyeight/data on GitHub",
    "source_url": "https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data"
}

Save this in metadata.json and run Datasette like so:

datasette serve fivethirtyeight.db -m metadata.json

The license and source information will be displayed on the index page and in the footer. They will also be included in the JSON produced by the API.

datasette publish

If you have Heroku or Google Cloud Run configured, Datasette can deploy one or more SQLite databases to the internet with a single command:

datasette publish heroku database.db

Or:

datasette publish cloudrun database.db

This will create a docker image containing both the datasette application and the specified SQLite database files. It will then deploy that image to Heroku or Cloud Run and give you a URL to access the resulting website and API.

See Publishing data in the documentation for more details.

Datasette Lite

Datasette Lite is Datasette packaged using WebAssembly so that it runs entirely in your browser, no Python web application server required. Read more about that in the Datasette Lite documentation.