[jacobo-dominguez-wgu]

Description

Add search, sort and user counts to the role catalog

Closes #569

Problem

The Admin Console's Roles and Permissions table needs search, sorting by name, resource type, members and last-updated date, and pagination with a total ("Showing N of M"). GET /api/authz/v1/roles/ (RoleListView, ADR 0028) returned the catalog only in role ID order, with no search, no sort and no member count.

The contract follows the draft Custom Roles ADR 0036 (#607), which is still under review, plus the details in this comment on #569.

Approach

New fields on each role

• user_count: the number of distinct active users with the role, in scopes of the requested types that the caller can view. It uses the same visibility rules as the team members endpoints, with the same staff and superuser bypass.
• updated_at: null for static roles. The real value will come with custom roles.

New query parameters (unknown values return 400; empty values fall back to the default)

• search: case-insensitive substring match on the display name.
• sort_by: display_name (the default), scope_type, user_count or updated_at.
• order: asc (the default) or desc.
• definition_kind: static or user_defined. It's in the ADR, but the frontend won't use it for now.

How it works

• User counts: the new public api.get_visible_role_user_counts loads the assignment rows once, applies _filter_allowed_assignments, drops inactive users with one query, and counts usernames per role.
• Filtering and sorting: the new RoleSearchFilter and RoleOrderingFilter backends follow the same pattern as the team members endpoints (TeamMemberSearchFilter, TeamMemberOrderingFilter). They call new filter_roles and sort_roles helpers in rest_api/utils.py.
  • Unlike the existing backends, they read ListRolesQuerySerializer's validated output (view.validated_query_params) instead of the raw query string. Values arrive stripped and with defaults filled in, so ?search=%20author%20 still matches.
  • Roles without updated_at sort last in both orders, and ties break by role ID, so pages are stable.
• Order of steps: filtering and sorting run before pagination, so count, next and previous describe the filtered list. The categories and permissions catalogs stay complete.

Also included: a fix for an existing bug. ?sort_by= or ?order= with an empty value returned a 500 on GET /users/, GET /users/<username>/assignments/ and GET /assignments/. The three ordering backends now fall back to their defaults, and each endpoint has a regression test.

Reviewer notes

• Default order changed. The catalog now lists roles by display name instead of by role ID. ADR 0028 still says "by identifier"; ADR 0036 changes it.
• Performance. user_count loads every role assignment on each request: O(N) Python work, plus one User query with an IN list. The users endpoints already work this way (get_visible_role_assignments_for_user), but this endpoint used to make only a few schema queries. The draft ADR mentions "one grouped query". That isn't possible directly because assignment scopes are full keys or globs, and SQL can't apply the caller-visibility rules to them as stored. A lighter loader or a SQL version can follow once there are measurements.
• Translation. Display names aren't translated at runtime yet, so search and sort use the stored English names. When translation lands, it has to run before the filter backends.
• Size. About 930 lines across 14 files, roughly 290 of them source and the rest tests. That's above the ~400-line guideline. It could be split into "user count and validation" and "search and sort".

Testing

• Unit and view tests cover every control: each sort field in both orders, None sorting last, tie-breaks, search with extra spaces, empty results, 400s on bad values, and count after filtering.
• User count tests cover distinct users, inactive users, glob scopes, caller visibility, staff callers and callers with no roles.
• The full suite passes on the latest main (1930 tests). Ruff and pylint are clean on the changed files.

Manual testing

1. Mount this repo in tutor dev and restart: tutor dev restart lms cms.
2. As a staff user, call GET /api/authz/v1/roles/?scope_types=course-v1,lib&sort_by=user_count&order=desc. Check that user_count and updated_at are on every role and that the order is right.
3. Add search=admin and check that count drops while permissions stays the same.
4. Repeat as a user with library_admin in a single library. user_count should only count users in that library.
5. Try sort_by=bogus (expect 400) and sort_by= (expect the default order).

Merge checklist:
Check off if complete or not applicable:

• Documentation updated (not only docstrings): CHANGELOG.rst
• Fixup commits are squashed away
• Unit tests added/updated
• Manual testing instructions provided
• Noted any: Concerns, dependencies, migration issues, deadlines, tickets

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