testland/row-level-security-postgres-reference

Pure-reference catalog of Postgres Row-Level Security (RLS) for tenant isolation. Covers enabling RLS (ALTER TABLE ... ENABLE ROW LEVEL SECURITY, default-deny semantics), CREATE POLICY syntax (USING vs WITH CHECK clauses, FOR SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE/ALL, permissive vs restrictive, TO role_name), bypassing RLS (superuser / BYPASSRLS / table owner / FORCE ROW LEVEL SECURITY), tenant context patterns (current_user, current_setting, JWT claims via Supabase auth.uid() / auth.jwt()), performance discipline (wrapping auth functions in SELECT, index on policy-referenced columns), and anti-patterns. Use as the RLS-pattern reference for Postgres-backed tenant isolation. Consumed by tenant-leak-test-author, cross-tenant-data-leak-tests.

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CREATE POLICY syntax reference

Name: testland/row-level-security-postgres-reference
Rating: 75.2 (1 reviews)
Author: testland

Full CREATE POLICY grammar plus the clause semantics a tenant policy relies on.

Grammar

CREATE POLICY policy_name ON table_name
    [ AS { PERMISSIVE | RESTRICTIVE } ]
    [ FOR { ALL | SELECT | INSERT | UPDATE | DELETE } ]
    [ TO role_name [, ...] ]
    [ USING ( using_expression ) ]
    [ WITH CHECK ( check_expression ) ];

USING vs WITH CHECK

Clause	Controls
`USING`	Which rows are visible (SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE)
`WITH CHECK`	Which rows can be written (INSERT, UPDATE)

If only USING is specified, it implicitly applies to both.

Per Postgres docs, the canonical own-data UPDATE policy uses both:

CREATE POLICY user_policy ON users
    FOR UPDATE
    USING (user_name = current_user)
    WITH CHECK (
        user_name = current_user AND
        shell IN ('/bin/bash', '/bin/sh', '/bin/dash')
    );

USING ensures the user can only update their own row; WITH CHECK ensures they can't update the row into a state that violates other invariants.

Per-command policies

For SELECT/UPDATE divergence (a common tenant pattern: all users see all rows, but only modify their own):

CREATE POLICY user_sel_policy ON users
    FOR SELECT
    USING (true);

CREATE POLICY user_mod_policy ON users
    FOR UPDATE
    USING (user_name = current_user);

Permissive vs restrictive policies

Type	Combination
PERMISSIVE (default)	Multiple policies combine with OR - any match grants access
RESTRICTIVE	Multiple policies combine with AND - all must allow

Restrictive policies layer additional constraints on top of permissive ones. Per Postgres docs:

-- Permissive: anyone in role 'admin' or whose row matches
-- Restrictive: only allow when from local network
CREATE POLICY admin_local_only ON passwd
    AS RESTRICTIVE TO admin
    USING (pg_catalog.inet_client_addr() IS NULL);

TO role_name

If omitted, the policy applies to all users (TO PUBLIC). For tenant isolation, scope policies to the application role:

CREATE POLICY tenant_isolation ON documents
    TO app_user
    USING (tenant_id = current_setting('app.tenant_id')::uuid);

References

CREATE POLICY syntax: postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-createpolicy.html.

.tessl-plugin

references

create-policy-syntax.md

policy-and-bypass-patterns.md

tenant-context-patterns.md

SKILL.md

tile.json