YAPP (Yet Another Permissions Plugin)
There are many permission plugins available to choose from. This is yet another one.
Introduction
The aim of this plugin is to make managing permissions as user-friendly as possible. It has an easy to use in-game menu system for making permission modifications, as well as fairly easy to understand commands. The files it creates are also very user-friendly, as they are not as strict as YAML files. Indentation and whitespace are not a concern.
Features
- Server-wide permissions
- Per-world permissions
- Inherit multiple groups
- Chat prefixes and name colors
- Promote and demote players
- Rename and delete groups
- Complete in-game menu system
Guide
The full guide to this plugin can be found here:
What Are Permissions?
If you have never used a permissions plugin before, you may not know exactly how they work or what they are used for. If that is true, then this section is for you. If you are already familiar with other permissions plugins, you can skip this section.
A permissions plugin allows you to have detailed control over what kinds of things your players can do. Each plugin can define certain permission "nodes" that control certain actions from that plugin. A node generally takes the form of pluginname.command or pluginname.feature.something. In order for a player to use that command or feature, they must have the associated permission node. Each plugin should have a list of permission nodes somewhere on its project page or website.
This plugin allows you to assign permission nodes directly to players. It also allows you to set up permission groups. You can then assign permission nodes to groups instead of to the players. Then you can put a player in the groups they belong in, and they will inherit the permissions of the group.
In addition, groups can be members of other groups. So for example, you could have an "admins" group, that inherits (is a member of) the "moderators" group, which inherits the "members" group. If a player is placed in the "admins" group, then they will get those permissions, as well as the "moderators" and "members" permissions.
This plugin also allows you to set up server-wide permissions and world-specific permissions. For example, you could give a certain permission node to a group, but then remove that permission node for that group in a specific world. Or you can ignore server-wide permissions all together and put all permission data in each individual world. How you set it up is your choice.
Installation and Configuration
Simply download the file and drop it into your plugins folder to install. If you are converting from another permissions plugin, there are some conversion commands available.
When you start your server for the first time after installing, a config.txt file will be created in your plugins/YAPP folder. An important thing about this configuration file (and all files this plugin creates) is that they are much more friendly than yml files. It is okay to add extra whitespace, including both tabs and spaces.
The names of the config values are fairly self-explanatory, but a full description can be found in the config section of the plugin guide.
Permissions
This plugin uses several permission nodes. The important ones are:
- yapp.admin - Only those with this permission can use the in-game commands to modify permission settings. Defaults to op-only.
- yapp.build - A player must have this permission to interact with the world. This permission can be disabled in the configuration file. Defaults to false.
There are also permissions for the promote and demote commands, as well as permissions that can control a player's ability to interact with the world. A full list can be found in the permissions section of the plugin guide.
Usage
The methods for modifying permission settings are designed to be very easy to use and easy to remember. There are actually three ways to make changes to the permission system.
Remember when making changes with any of these methods you will need to reload for the changes to take effect. In the menu, the option to reload is in the main menu, option '5' or 'S' or 'R'. The command to reload is /yapp @ or /yapp reload. You can also reload just a specific player's permissions with the command /yapp @ player. Note that this will only reload simple changes, like adding or removing permission nodes or groups directly to the player (if you add or remove permissions to a group, reloading the player will not reload the group changes).
Menu
The main command in this plugin is /yapp. The aliases /perm and /perms are also available. If you use this command on its own without any arguments, it will open a guided menu system. The menu is the easiest way to make simple modifications to permission and group information.
While you are in the menu system, there are a few options that are always available to you.
- < will return you to the previous menu
- ! will return you to the main menu
- ? will tell you your current selection, and will sometimes give help about the current screen
- q or quit will exit the menu
Many of the menu screens will have a list of numbered options with highlighted words. To select an option, you can either type the number, type the highlighted word, or just type the highlighted letter within the word.
Commands
Changing settings with normal commands will require multiple commands in sequence. These commands can be used both in-game (with the yapp.admin permission node) and on the command line. In general, your commands will use the following pattern:
- Select something (a player or group, and world if desired)
- Make changes to the selected object
- Save the settings and reload the permission data
You can look at some examples to help you understand how it works.
There are also commands for promoting and demoting players.
Files
The file storage system for this plugin is designed to be very easy to read and understand. It is whitespace-friendly, meaning you can add extra spaces, tabs, and line breaks without problem. The one disadvantage is that the information is spread into many different files. However, this can also be seen as an advantage, as you don't have to scroll through huge files to find what you're looking for.
For further information, please see the files section of the plugin guide.
Source
The full source can be found on my repository on Google Code:
http://code.google.com/p/nisovin-minecraft-bukkit-plugins/source/browse/trunk/YAPP/
Question and Answers
Why create another permission plugin?
Partly to learn. Partly because I wanted to make a better plugin. And because I just felt like it. Some may hate me for adding yet another permission plugin to the pool, but I personally think I've created something useful.
Does this support Vault?
It should fully support Vault, including any plugins that depend on Vault.
Can I use the '*' node?
Special wildcard nodes are supported, but they have some restrictions. See the wildcard information in the guide.
Why so many files?
Why so few? I know a lot of people prefer to have their permission data crammed into just a couple files, but I personally think it's nice to have it spread out. Digging through a massive file for a specific user or group is just annoying. This way, you can easily see all the files, probably in alphabetical order, and find exactly what you're looking for fairly quickly.
@craftycreeper
I completely agree, each plugin should just have parent permissions for each node set and then a parent for the parents of the node set. That would make life easy, there would be no wildcards just parents and children and at least we would all know that all the plugins worked the same way. But that is not how bukkit handle's things. so we now get to figure out which plugins use wildcards and which do not.
yapp by the way does not use wildcards for all of the nodes but does use wildcards for some of them. so yapp.* does not give you all the yapp permissions thus you must give yapp.build and yapp.admin as well as yapp.promote and yapp.demote etc.
I really am liking the way nisovin has set up the files and format for his plugin though.
@epicbastion
Ugh. The way Bukkit handles wildcard permissions is just awful :P There should not be pre-set .* nodes in plugins!
@craftycreeper
Thanks, yes bukkit changed the output so it would not spam our consoles any longer.
I also experience the group reset when using the ingame menu, I have just started doing all my changes directly to the files for now, I am sure nisovin will get the in game menu sorted in the next version.
I have had a discussion with nisovin about permissions and the * global unless the plugin actually has the * as a permission node it will not work, meaning if a plugin like multiverse has a multiverse.* it will work but with nocheatplus there is no global permission so each permission has to be added individually. so more than likely bukkit.command's will need to be entered individually or set up a bukkit group with the permission nodes you want then just add that group to the players/groups you want to have it.
@nisovin: I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it seems that granting yapp.* to a group is not sufficient for them to receive yapp.admin. I'm not having trouble with other * sub-nodes yet, but I had to specifically grant yapp.admin for the /yapp command to work ingame and not from the console.
Also, in the menu, Edit player > More options > 3 (show all permission nodes) exits the menu and reloads instead of showing permissions.
Using the ingame menu at all seems to immediately revert my (and others') group to default, no matter what I had it set to. This one's a showstopper.
Edit: One last thing, it also seems giving bukkit.command.* to a group does not give access to the built-in commands. I get the long-form "You do not have permission to use that command, please contact your server administrator" message despite being in a group with that permission.
@epicbastion
I'm not experiencing this on the newest Bukkit dev build. Have you given a very recent build a try?
So downloaded your .7 version put it on my test server and got this, can you update this I realize it does not break the plugin but it would be nice not to see the spam.
thanks.
@Europia79
Wow, I feel stupid. Try this version: http://nisovin.com/yapp/YAPP.jar
i give out Member rank as a reward for voting, and reset it when votes resets... with one file, i can easily find & replace all words Member with default.
that's my only concern, otherwise, looks good.
so after you select a group, Admin for example, you can continually add nodes to it without having to re-select it ?
EDIT: you know what, i could probably just delete ALL the player files and re-add the staff & donators back in by hand ?
http://pastebin.com/mfaeCm97 it gives me a warning, then deletes all the nodes i add to every group except default
@craftycreeper
Seems to work fine on 1.3 from my testing.
I'm a bit surprised you haven't gotten any attention for this yet - it looks pretty solid. I plan to give it a try - have you tested it on 1.3 dev builds yet?