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Cerbos provides official client SDKs for multiple programming languages, making it easy to integrate authorization into your applications. All SDKs provide type-safe interfaces for calling the Cerbos PDP APIs.

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Available SDKs

Go SDK

Official Go client for Cerbos authorization

Java SDK

Official Java client for Cerbos authorization

JavaScript SDK

Official JavaScript/TypeScript client for Cerbos authorization

.NET SDK

Official .NET client for Cerbos authorization

PHP SDK

Official PHP client for Cerbos authorization

Python SDK

Official Python client for Cerbos authorization

Ruby SDK

Official Ruby client for Cerbos authorization

Rust SDK

Official Rust client for Cerbos authorization

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Core API Methods

All SDKs provide access to the two primary Cerbos PDP APIs:

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CheckResources

The CheckResources API answers the question: “Can this principal perform these actions on these resources?” This is the most common API used in applications to make authorization decisions. You provide:
  • Principal: The user or service making the request (ID and roles)
  • Resources: One or more resources with their attributes
  • Actions: The actions to check (e.g., “view”, “edit”, “delete”)
The API returns an EFFECT_ALLOW or EFFECT_DENY decision for each action on each resource.
Use CheckResources when you have specific resource instances and need to check if a principal can perform actions on them.

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PlanResources

The PlanResources API answers the question: “Which resources of this kind can this principal access?” This API is designed for filtering large datasets efficiently. Instead of checking permissions for each resource individually, it returns a query plan that can be used to filter resources at the database level. The query plan can be:
  • Unconditional: All resources are allowed/denied
  • Conditional: Resources matching specific conditions are allowed
Use query plan adapters to convert the query plan into database-specific queries.
Use PlanResources when you need to filter a list or dataset based on what the principal can access, especially for pagination or search results.

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SDK Features

All official Cerbos SDKs provide:
  • Type-safe API clients for CheckResources and PlanResources
  • Connection management with configurable timeouts and retries
  • TLS/mTLS support for secure communication
  • Metadata and tracing support for observability
  • Request validation to catch errors before sending to the PDP
  • Async/sync interfaces (where applicable to the language)

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Getting Started

Each SDK repository contains:
  • Installation instructions for your package manager
  • Quickstart guides and examples
  • API reference documentation
  • Integration patterns and best practices
Visit the GitHub repository for your preferred language to get started.

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Common Integration Patterns

When integrating Cerbos SDKs into your application:
  1. Initialize once: Create a single SDK client instance and reuse it across your application
  2. Pass context: Include relevant user and resource attributes in authorization checks
  3. Handle errors: Implement proper error handling for network and authorization failures
  4. Cache appropriately: Consider caching decisions for read-heavy workloads (with appropriate TTLs)
  5. Monitor calls: Track authorization check latency and failures in your observability stack

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Support

All SDKs are actively maintained by the Cerbos team. For issues or questions:

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