Parse Auditor

This is a small module inspired by Hibernate's Envers project. It adds automated data versioning/tracking/auditing to classes.

This can be very helpful for apps that need to adhere to regulations like healthcare apps which need to adhere to HIPAA standards. This can also be used for apps that have a high level of data sensitivity like legal or FinTech apps.

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Install

You can use parse-auditor anywhere you can use other cloud code hooks, such as Parse.Cloud.beforeSave(). To get parse-auditor onto your Parse Serve, edit the cloud/package.json file:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "parse-auditor": "*"
  }
}

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Usage

Let say you have a healthcare app that needs HIPAA logging around its Patient and Clinic classes. Simply add this to your app's cloud code (i.e. cloud/main.js):

const ParseAuditor = require('parse-auditor');
ParseAuditor(['Patient', 'Clinic'])

You usage of Patient and Clinic goes unchanged, simply write/read form those classes as you normally would. However, any changes to records in either class will now be automatically versioned and tracked in Patient_AUD and Clinic_AUD respectively.

You can also tell parse-auditor which classes to track reads on:

const ParseAuditor = require('parse-auditor');
ParseAuditor(['Patient', 'Clinic'], ['Patient'])

This will not only track all edits to both these classes (creates, updates, deletes) but any views to a Patient will also be tracked. This will all be logged in classes named Patient_AUD & Clinic_AUD respectively.

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Accessing Audit Data

All data for classes that are being audited are stored in *_AUD classes. These classes can be access to query the history of a record. There are 4 extra fields automatically included with each audit log:

• meta_actor: The user involved in this event. Either the user who made the update, or the one who viewed this record.
• meta_action: Will be "SAVE", "DELETE", or "FIND" depending on the action the user took.
• meta_class: The name of class, convenient when combining complex audit histories across many classes.
• meta_subject: The row being edited/viewed.

So, for exmaple, if you has a Patrient record with ID EBI363xFOg you could query the entire edit/view history of that patient (using the JavaScript Parse SDK):

const Patient = Parse.Object.extend("Patient");
const query = new Parse.Query(Patient);
query.equalTo("meta_subject", "EBI363xFOg");
const results = await query.find();
alert("Successfully retrieved " + results.length + " audit records.");
// Do something with the returned Parse.Object values
for (let i = 0; i < results.length; i++) {
  var object = results[i];
  console.log(object.get('meta_actor') + ' - ' + object.get('name'));
}

This would output the patient's name over time top the console, so you could see if it changed, and who made the change.

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Configuation

The third argument to parse-auditor is a config object. The structure of this object, and its defaults are:

{
    classPrefix: '',
    classPostfix: '_AUD',
    fieldPrefix: 'meta_',
    fieldPostfix: '',
    parseSDK: Parse,
    useMasterKey: false,
    clp: {}
}

For example:

const ParseAuditor = require('parse-auditor');
const customConfig = { classPostfix: '_HISTORY', useMasterKey: true, clp: {create: { '*': true }, addField: { '*': true } } };
ParseAuditor(['Patient', 'Clinic'], ['Patient'], customConfig);

This will track all edits to these classes (creates, updates, deletes) as well as any views to a Patient. This will all be logged in classes named Patient_HISTORY & Clinic_HISTORY respectively instead of Patient_AUD/Clinic_AUD.

Project Sponsor

This project is sponsored and maintained by Blackburn Labs.