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Areas

See also: How configuration works · Settings reference

Areas are the top-level parts of the ontology (Thesaurus, Resources, Tools, …). Denying one removes it from the menu and puts it out of reach — for every user, root included — because the check happens before the security layer.

In v7 this is two .env keys, both JSON arrays of tipos:

# ../private/.env
AREAS_DENY=["dd137","rsc1","hierarchy20"]
MENU_SKIP_TIPOS=["dd349","dd355","numisdata1","tch188"]
  • AREAS_DENY — areas removed from the ontology before the access check. There is no allow-list: denial is absolute.
  • MENU_SKIP_TIPOS — areas that stay reachable but are hidden from the menu.

You can also change these at runtime

The maintenance area persists an override to ../private/ts_state.json, which the menu and the security datalist consult live — no restart, no .env edit. An override set back to null falls through to the .env value.

What an area denial means

Areas refer to different parts of the ontology. Every area has a specific, unique tipo (typology of indirect programming object). When an area is denied, it is removed from the menu and no user — not even the root user — can reach it: the deny list is applied before the security access check and strips those tipos from the ontology. Dédalo keeps some private areas in the ontology as internal lists of values, such as the Yes/No list, which must not be edited; those are denied by default.

Denial is not a permission

A denied area is removed from the ontology before the security check runs, so it is unreachable even for root. Some private lists (the Yes/No list, for instance) are denied by default and must stay that way.