Creating a video-sharing application like YouTube is not just about front-end design and data storage; you need to have secure dynamic control over what users can see and do. With Svelte.js handling the interface and Firebase supporting backend functionalities, integrating Permit.io enables robust access control, using role-based access control (RBAC) to enforce detailed permissions.

In this tutorial, you will build a secure YouTube clone that allows users to interact only within limited boundaries, according to their role and context.

Our goal is to create a YouTube clone where permissions control which users can upload, delete, or view videos based on the roles (RBAC) assigned to them.

Firebase is a hosted platform that helps people to create, run, and scale web and mobile apps. It offers services and tools such as authentication, real-time database, cloud storage, machine learning, remote configuration, and Static file hosting.

We'll use Firebase for our backend storage and authentication. Follow the steps below to set up your Firebase app:

2. Enable Firestore Database, Firebase Authentication (Email/Password), and Firebase Storage to manage user data and videos.

4. From your Firebase console, Click on the Settings icon → Project Settings → Service Account. Select Node.js and click on the "Generate new private key" button to download your credentials.

With Firebase set up, we're now ready to move on to our app build and integrate Permit.io for managing permissions.

Role-based access control (RBAC) is a method of managing user access to systems and resources based on a user's role or job responsibilities.

With RBAC, permissions are easy to manage for different user types because roles determine what actions can be taken. Here is how it works in our app:

Let's look at this example on the flowchart below, which shows the user roles in our app and what access they have.

With RBAC, we can give permissions by setting roles such as Admin, Creator, and Viewer and giving each role what they can do. This structure also allows us to easily organize access into broad categories, which also means that if we have to change permissions for a group, it's a quick role update. For example, Admins can have complete control over videos, Editors can edit the content, and Viewers can only view videos without any editing rights.

To learn more about RBAC and why you should use it in your application, check out this blog.

To start with Permit.io, you'll first need to set up an account and get the necessary credentials. These credentials are essential for connecting Permit.io to our backend, where we'll handle all permission checks.

To do that, follow the steps below:

1. Create a Permit.io account and set up a new project in the dashboard.

Now that we understand what RBAC is and how it applies to our YouTube clone app, let's proceed; let's create RBAC roles and policies in Permit.io. Follow these steps to set up RBAC:

From the above image, we have given the Admin full access to the Video resource and the Content Creator other access except to delete a video and the Viewer access to comment, create, read, and like a video.

1. After defining permissions for each role, save the policies.

We have created a new user with a Viewer role. This means that this user will have all the access granted to the viewer role on the Video resource.

Now that roles and permissions are defined, it's time to connect Permit.io to our backend API. To get started quickly, clone the starter project and install dependencies.

This project includes the frontend built in Svelte, the backend API in Node.js, and Firebase integrations.

To allow Permit.io to know our users and the roles they have, we need to sync our users with Permit.io at the point of successful registration. In file, update the register function with the code below to sync the user and assign a role after registration:

In the above code, once a user registers, we sync it with Permit.io and assign it a Viewer role. Let's register a new user named John Doe in our YouTube clone app and see our implementation in action.

Next, update the file to assign a user a content-creator role when they create a channel so they can create and manage their videos.

We've able to sync our users with Permit.io and assign them a role, let's create a middleware to enforce the permissions and role checks we implemented. Create a new file in the directory and add the code below to handle permission checks:

Let's update all our route files to use the permission middleware for protected routes. We'll add to the file, go ahead and add to other routes.

Implementing RBAC in our YouTube clone has provided a secure and manageable way to control user access based on roles. Permit.io's simple UI and API make setting up and enforcing role-based permissions trivial, and we can easily assign and change access levels. This foundational layer of access control ensures that every user can interact with the app in their own way, based on their role, making the app ready for real-world use.

For those exploring more advanced, context-sensitive access control, attribute-based access control (ABAC) is a logical next step, offering flexibility for future needs.