Users Management (.users)

Users Management (.users)

Estimated reading time: 10’

What you’ll learn

This guide’s objective is to help you get familiarized with PySyft’s Users API. You will learn to:

  • access, register, update and delete user accounts

  • configure the registration options

  • update login credentials for user accounts

User Roles in Syft

There are three types of accounts for a domain:

  • ADMIN - used for internal Datasite administrators and data owners

  • DATA_SCIENTIST - used for external researchers (accessing data)

  • GUEST - used for external users

They are differentiated based on what permissions they have. Here is a permissions table for quick reference:

Create Users

List Users

Update Users

Delete Users

ADMIN

✅

✅

✅

✅

DATA_SCIENTIST

🚫

🚫

✔️*

🚫

GUEST

🚫

🚫

✔*

🚫

* DATA_SCIENTIST and GUEST accounts can only update their own information

You can interact with a Datasite through a Syft client.

Account Login

The most straight-forward way to login to a Datasite is by instatiating a client with the sy.login() function, which requires an account’s credentials (email/password).

Prerequisites

The following code snippets assume you have deployed a Datasite.

Hide code cell source 
import syft as sy

conn = sy.orchestra.launch(name="local_domain", port="auto", dev_mode=False, reset=True)

import syft as sy

admin_client = sy.login(
    url='localhost',
    port = conn.port,
    email="[email protected]",
    password="changethis",
)

An admin can also login as other users or as a guest user.

ds_client = admin_client.login_as('[email protected]')

guest_client = admin_client.login_as_guest()

Changing Login Credentials

It’s important to change an account’s default password (or the password specified when creating the account) as soon as possible. This can be achieved with the client.account.set_password() function.

admin_client.account.set_password('new_password', confirm=False)

This option is available for every account type. Additionaly, as an admin, you can change an account’s login credentials with the users.update() function, detailed below.

CRUD on Users Profiles

Create Users

Only ADMIN users can create new accounts.

New user accounts can be created via the client.users.create() function, which has the following signature:

client.users.create(user_create: UserCreate)

The user_create parameter is a UserCreate object, that will be instantiated with the following arguments:

  • id: str - automatically generated by PySyft

  • name: str - the name associated with the new account

  • email: str - the email address associated with the new account

  • password: str - the password associated with the new account

  • institution: str (optional)

  • website: str (optional)

  • role: ServiceRole - could be one of ADMIN, GUEST or DATA_SCIENTIST (default)

from syft.service.user.user import UserCreate, ServiceRole

admin_client.users.create(
    name='John Doe',
    email='[email protected]',
    password='password',
    role=ServiceRole.DATA_SCIENTIST
)

See Registered Users

Only ADMIN users can list the users available on a Datasite.

You can see a list of registered users on the Datasite through the client object.

users = admin_client.users
users

You can perform various operations on users by selecting them from the client.users object.

# Select the second user in the list
users[1]

# Select a user with a specific email
email = '[email protected]'

user = [u for u in users if u.email == email][0]
user.name

Update User Information

Only ADMIN users can update other users’ information. Every user type can update their own information.

A user’s information can be updated via the client.users.update() function, which has the following signature.

client.users.update(uid: str, user_update: UserUpdate)

The uid parameter is the ID of the account you want to update.

The user_udpate parameter is a UserUpdate object, that will be instantiated with the same arguments as UserCreate. However, only updated fields need to be specified.

from syft.service.user.user import UserUpdate, ServiceRole

user = admin_client.users[1]

admin_client.users.update(
    uid=user.id, 
    name='Updated John Doe',
    password='123456789',
    role=ServiceRole.GUEST
)

Every user, regardless of their account type, can update their own information via the client.account.update() function.

# Example
admin_client.account.update(name='Updated Admin')

Delete Users

ADMIN users can delete any other user.

Users can be deleted via the client.user.delete() function, which has the following signature:

client.users.delete(uid: str)

The uid parameter is the ID of the account you want to delete.

admin_client.users

user = admin_client.users[1]

admin_client.users.delete(user.id)

admin_client.users

Notifications

PySyft can send notifications for various events in the data access/processing workflows. Only email notifications are currently supported, but future versions will include other types of notifications (SMS, Slack etc.).

You can check if the notifications are enabled for your account by inspecting the client.account.notifications_enabled object:

admin_client.account.notifications_enabled

For more details on notifications, such as enabling or disabling them, checkout the Notifications API guide

Configure Registration Workflow

ADMIN users can toggle between two registration workflows:

  • Manual Registration (default): keep your Datasite private and manually add new users

  • Self-Service Registration: allow your Datasite to be discoverable, so any visitor can create a new DATA_SCIENTIST account

An admin can switch between the two registration workflows via the client.settings.allow_guest_signup() function, which has the following signature:

client.settings.allow_guest_signup(enable: bool)

When enable is set to False the workflow switches to Manual Registration, and when enable is set to True the workflow switches to Self-Service Registration and the Datasite becomes discoverable.

# Switch to MANUAL registration
admin_client.settings.allow_guest_signup(enable=False)

# Switch to SELF-SERVICE registration (the Datasite becomes discoverable)
admin_client.settings.allow_guest_signup(enable=True)

When the Datasite is discoverable, the data scientist can connect to the Datasite and register their account with the help of the domain.register() function, which takes the following parameters:

  • name: str

  • email: str

  • password: str

  • password_verify: str - must have the same value as password

  • institution: str (optional)

  • website: str (optional)

import syft as sy

# Connect to the discoverable Datasite
discoverable_domain = sy.connect(url='localhost', port=conn.port)

discoverable_domain.register(
    name='Curious Scientist',
    email='[email protected]',
    password='data_scientist_password',
    password_verify='data_scientist_password',
)

After registering, a DATA_SCIENTIST user is created, which can be accessed through a client.

admin_client.users

ds_client = sy.login(
    url='localhost',
    port=conn.port,
    email="[email protected]",
    password="data_scientist_password",
)

ds_client
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