4.8 KiB
Guest Access
There are times when it is desirable for clients to be able to interact with rooms without having to fully register for an account on a homeserver or join the room. This module specifies how these clients should interact with servers in order to participate in rooms as guests.
Guest users retrieve access tokens from a homeserver using the ordinary
register
endpoint,
specifying the kind
parameter as guest
. They may then interact with
the client-server API as any other user would, but will only have access
to a subset of the API as described the Client behaviour subsection
below. Homeservers may choose not to allow this access at all to their
local users, but have no information about whether users on other
homeservers are guests or not.
Guest users can also upgrade their account by going through the ordinary
register
flow, but specifying the additional POST parameter
guest_access_token
containing the guest's access token. They are also
required to specify the username
parameter to the value of the local
part of their username, which is otherwise optional.
This module does not fully factor in federation; it relies on individual homeservers properly adhering to the rules set out in this module, rather than allowing all homeservers to enforce the rules on each other.
Events
{{% event event="m.room.guest_access" %}}
Client behaviour
The following API endpoints are allowed to be accessed by guest accounts for retrieving events and associated media:
- GET /rooms/{roomId}/state
- GET /rooms/{roomId}/context/{eventId}
- GET /rooms/{roomId}/event/{eventId}
- GET /rooms/{roomId}/state/{eventType}/{stateKey}
- GET /rooms/{roomId}/messages
- {{% added-in v="1.1" %}} GET /rooms/{roomId}/members
- GET /rooms/{roomId}/initialSync
- GET /sync
- GET /events as used for room previews.
- {{% added-in v="1.12" %}} GET /media/download/{serverName}/{mediaId}
- {{% added-in v="1.12" %}} GET /media/download/{serverName}/{mediaId}/{fileName}
- {{% added-in v="1.12" %}} GET /media/thumbnail/{serverName}/{mediaId}
The following API endpoints are allowed to be accessed by guest accounts for sending events:
-
PUT /rooms/{roomId}/send/{eventType}/{txnId}
- {{% changed-in v="1.2" %}} Guests can now send any event type rather than just
m.room.message
events.
- {{% changed-in v="1.2" %}} Guests can now send any event type rather than just
-
{{% added-in v="1.2" %}} PUT /rooms/{roomId}/state/{eventType}/{stateKey}
The following API endpoints are allowed to be accessed by guest accounts for their own account maintenance:
- PUT /profile/{userId}/displayname
- GET /devices
- GET /devices/{deviceId}
- PUT /devices/{deviceId}
- {{% added-in v="1.2" %}} GET /account/whoami
The following API endpoints are allowed to be accessed by guest accounts for end-to-end encryption:
Server behaviour
Servers MUST only allow guest users to join rooms if the
m.room.guest_access
state event is present on the room, and has the
guest_access
value can_join
. If the m.room.guest_access
event is
changed to stop this from being the case, the server MUST set those
users' m.room.member
state to leave
.
Security considerations
Each homeserver manages its own guest accounts itself, and whether an account is a guest account or not is not information passed from server to server. Accordingly, any server participating in a room is trusted to properly enforce the permissions outlined in this section.
Homeservers may want to enable protections such as captchas for guest registration to prevent spam, denial of service, and similar attacks.
Homeservers may want to put stricter rate limits on guest accounts, particularly for sending state events.