Implement Backstage permissions framework to restrict catalog entity deletion to owners using a custom permission policy
domain: backstage.io · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Install the @backstage/plugin-permission-backend and related packages, then enable the permission backend in your backend index
Create a custom permission policy class implementing the PermissionPolicy interface with a handle method that inspects the permission and principal
Inside handle, check if the permission is the catalogEntityDeletePermission; if so, query the catalog to compare the entity's spec.owner against the caller's identity
Return ALLOW for owners and DENY for all others; return ALLOW unconditionally for all other permission types to avoid blocking unrelated features
Register the policy in the permission backend configuration and test by attempting deletion as both an owner and a non-owner user
Known gotchas
The conditional decision type allows returning conditions rather than a definitive ALLOW/DENY; use it for scalable filtering rather than per-request catalog lookups where possible
Forgetting to handle the default case (all other permissions) with ALLOW breaks unrelated plugins that rely on the permission framework
The permission framework requires an identity resolver to map bearer tokens to Backstage user entity refs; misconfigured identity resolvers produce unexpected DENY decisions
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