Design and Implementation of a Multi‑Platform RBAC Permission System for DuoliXiong Business

DuoliXiong, a Baidu‑owned local‑life service platform, offers low‑price, high‑quality services across categories such as dining, hotels, and entertainment, and operates through multiple channels including Baidu’s search engine, Baidu Mini‑Programs, and WeChat.

The platform’s architecture is divided into three layers: the ecosystem scene layer, the platform support layer, and the foundational construction layer, each comprising numerous independent systems (merchant platform, operation platform, audit platform, etc.) that create a complex permission‑management landscape.

Key permission challenges identified are: heterogeneous account systems across platforms, extensive role hierarchies with collaborative workflows, and language‑diverse implementations that demand easy integration.

To address these, the team adopts a role‑based access control (RBAC) approach, explaining its four core components (Subject, Role, Session, Permission) and the four RBAC rules (role assignment, role authorization, permission authorization). Four RBAC model variants—Flat, Hierarchical, Constrained, and Symmetric—are evaluated, with the Flat RBAC model selected for its simplicity.

The permission system’s core responsibilities are defined as menu‑level control, functional‑group control, button‑level control, and multi‑business‑line support. Corresponding database tables are designed for business lines, users, roles, and permissions, each linked by a prod_id to enforce business‑line isolation.

Permissions are stored in a single tree‑structured table that mirrors the front‑end page hierarchy, enabling fine‑grained control over menus, pages, feature groups, and individual buttons. ER diagrams illustrate the relationships among business‑line, user, role, and permission entities.

Beyond functional permissions, the article discusses data permissions (row and column level), proposing a rule‑based mechanism that binds data‑access policies to roles, thereby allowing different users to see or edit only authorized data subsets.

Finally, the system is already powering DuoliXiong’s B‑end and O‑end platforms and is being extended to additional internal tools, with future work focusing on broader platform coverage and continued refinement of data‑level access controls.