feat: include authz course + org role grants in Meilisearch access filter

[wgu-taylor-payne]

Description

Studio search is powered by Meilisearch. On each request to the Studio search token endpoint (GET /api/content_search/v2/studio/), get_access_ids_for_request / _get_meili_access_filter build the per-user tenant-token filter that Meilisearch enforces server-side. The filter has two clauses: org IN [<org short_names>] OR access_id IN [<SearchAccess ids>]. Until now both clauses were built from legacy roles only — CourseStaffRole / CourseInstructorRole for the access_id (per-course) clause, and OrgStaffRole / OrgInstructorRole for the org clause.

Users who hold an authz-only course role — course_editor or course_auditor granted through openedx-authz, with no corresponding legacy CourseAccessRole row — were therefore invisible to the filter, and their courses returned zero results in the global Studio search modal (search icon / Cmd+K) and the "Review Content Updates" tab on the Library Updates page (/course/{id}/libraries), which uses Meilisearch to look up component details.

This change fixes both clauses:

Per-course grants (access_id clause): a new _get_authz_course_keys helper unions the user's per-course authz role assignments (CourseOverviewData scope) into the access_id filter when AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG is enabled. The flag is a CourseWaffleFlag, so the check is applied per course — a deployment running the flag globally-off with per-course or per-org overrides still resolves correctly.

Org-wide (glob) grants (org clause): an authz course role can also be granted at an org-wide scope, e.g. course-v1:Org+*, which surfaces as an OrgCourseOverviewGlobData scope rather than a per-course CourseOverviewData scope. That grant means "all courses in this org", so it was missed by both clauses — the per-course helper only looks at CourseOverviewData, and the legacy org clause only knows legacy org roles. A new get_authz_org_keys helper resolves these glob grants to org short_names and unions them into _get_user_orgs, so they land in the org IN [...] clause — one entry per org, mirroring how legacy org staff roles are handled and avoiding a per-course access_id fan-out that would burn slots against the JWT size cap (MAX_ACCESS_IDS_IN_FILTER). Because an org-wide grant is not tied to a single course, its flag gate is resolved at the org tier via a new public CourseWaffleFlag.is_enabled_for_org(org) method (added in this PR): an org override (force-on/force-off) takes precedence, otherwise the global switch — a per-course override cannot gate an org-wide grant.

Note that the authz→legacy compat layer already bridges course_staff→staff and course_admin→instructor (roles with a legacy twin), so those grants were already reaching the filter; the load-bearing cases here are course_editor / course_auditor, which have no legacy twin and are dropped by compat. Both helpers query purely by scope type and are role-agnostic — inclusion is pure widening into an OR filter (you can only gain search on a course/org you already hold a role on), the same safety posture as the fail-open behavior below.

Both lookups fail open: a DatabaseError from the authz/Casbin backend is logged and degrades to legacy-role access rather than returning a 500, while any unexpected exception propagates so real bugs surface. A non-course scope key (e.g. a library scope) appearing in the per-course query is skipped via InvalidKeyError.

Both helpers read a single per-request-cached fetch of the user's assignment set (_get_cached_authz_assignments, @request_cached), so the enforcer is queried once per request rather than once per helper. Authz course keys are normalized to strings so a course held via both a legacy and an authz role de-duplicates into one entry in the unioned set.

Commit structure. This PR is two commits: (1) feat: add org-tier resolution to CourseWaffleFlag adds the reusable public is_enabled_for_org method to waffle_utils (extracting the shared org-override resolution is_enabled already used internally); (2) feat: include authz course + org role grants in Meilisearch access filter is the search-filter change that consumes it. The first is a small, self-contained platform addition reviewable on its own.

Impacted user roles: Course Author (editors/auditors who rely on authz roles, at course or org scope), Operator (behavior is gated behind AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG).

Supporting information

• Fixes Studio search (Meilisearch) does not include courses for authz-only users openedx-authz#417
• Originally surfaced during testing of the view_library_updates enforcement work in Add courses.view_library_updates enforcement in openedx-platform openedx-authz#398 and PR feat: split read vs write authz checks for library updates #39009.

Testing instructions

1. Enable AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG (globally, or as a per-course / per-org override for the course/org under test).
2. Create a user with an authz course_editor (or course_auditor) role on a course, and no legacy CourseStaffRole/CourseInstructorRole on it.
3. As that user, open the global Studio search modal and search for content in that course — the course's content now appears (previously: zero results).
4. Repeat with an org-wide grant: assign an authz course_editor/course_auditor at an org-glob scope (e.g. course-v1:Org+*), enable the flag for that org, and confirm search returns that org's content via the org IN [...] clause (previously: zero results).
5. Open the course's Library Updates page → "Review Content Updates" tab and confirm component details resolve.
6. Automated: pytest openedx/core/djangoapps/waffle_utils/tests/test_init.py openedx/core/djangoapps/content/search/tests/test_models.py openedx/core/djangoapps/content/search/tests/test_views.py — test_init.py covers is_enabled_for_org (org override on/off/unset, and global-switch fallback with no override); StudioSearchAuthzAccessTest covers per-course (authz-only user sees courses with flag on, omit_orgs applies, flag-off excludes, DatabaseError swallowed, unexpected error propagates, unparseable scope skipped, legacy+authz de-duplicate); StudioSearchAuthzOrgAccessTest covers org-glob (org grant lands in the org clause, org-override forces on when the flag is globally off).

Deadline

None.

Other information

• Feature-flagged. Behavior only changes when AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG resolves enabled for a given course or org; with the flag off everywhere and no overrides, the filter is unchanged from today.
• Performance / follow-up (not blocking): the authz assignments are fetched and then flag-filtered. get_user_role_assignments_per_scope_type eagerly expands each role's implicit permissions, but these helpers only read scope.external_key / scope.org and discard the permissions — wasted work for users with many assignments. The computation runs once per token fetch (not per keystroke — the frontend reuses the minted tenant token for subsequent queries). A scopes-only authz API, and/or caching the computed access set with an explicit invalidation contract on role/flag change, would be the clean optimization; both are intentionally left out of this correctness fix.
• Org-tier flag resolution: CourseWaffleFlag.is_enabled only accepts a course key and has no public org-only entry point, so this PR adds CourseWaffleFlag.is_enabled_for_org(org) (org override → global switch) and get_authz_org_keys calls it. The org-override read that was inline in is_enabled's course resolution is extracted into a shared helper so both entry points resolve identically and share one cache entry per org.
• Also touches openedx/core/djangoapps/waffle_utils/ for the new is_enabled_for_org method and its tests (see Commit structure above).
• No database migrations.

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🔵 Needs a closer look

It changes authorization-sensitive filtering logic (who can search what) and should receive final human review despite strong test coverage.

Pull request overview

This PR updates Studio’s Meilisearch tenant-token access filter generation to include authorization grants coming from openedx-authz (including authz-only course roles like course_editor/course_auditor) so that users granted access via authz can see the appropriate course/org content in Studio search when AUTHZ_COURSE_AUTHORING_FLAG is enabled.

Changes:

• Expand per-course access_id filtering to union in authz CourseOverviewData scope assignments (flag-gated per course, fail-open on DatabaseError).
• Expand org org IN [...] filtering to union in authz org-glob (OrgCourseOverviewGlobData) assignments resolved to org short_names (flag-gated per org via org override/global switch).
• Add/extend CMS test coverage for both per-course authz access and org-glob authz access paths.

File summaries

File	Description
openedx/core/djangoapps/content/search/models.py	Adds authz assignment caching and helpers to include authz-derived course/org access in search access computation.
openedx/core/djangoapps/content/search/api.py	Unions authz org-glob grants into _get_user_orgs to populate the Meilisearch org clause.
openedx/core/djangoapps/content/search/tests/test_models.py	Adds tests for authz-only per-course and org-glob access behavior, including flag gating and fail-open error handling.
openedx/core/djangoapps/content/search/tests/test_views.py	Adds a Studio token endpoint test to verify authz org-glob access lands in the org filter clause.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 4/4 changed files
• Comments generated: 1
• Review effort level: Lite

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