Can I create a custom list of values like ACL in Varnish 4?

Question

I'm using Varnish version 4. I'd like to know if VCL allows a custom and reusable list of values like ACL. I want to use it to check against visitors' cookies. If he is a moderator, don't serve cached content.

Cookie String:

   session=9urt2jipvkq77brfrf; UserID=158

Code:

   acl moderator{
       "158";
       "114";
   }

   sub vcl_recv {

      set req.http.UserID = regsub(req.http.Cookie,".*UserID=(\d+).*","\1"); // 158

      if(req.http.UserID ~ moderator){ // 158 found in the moderator list

          return(pass);
      }
   }

Answer 1

Short answer: no

ACL (access control list) is only used for specifying different IPs/hosts.

However you can use a VMOD to accomplish this. Checkout Variable

It has some basic functions for setting and getting variables.

set("my_var", "this is the value")
set req.http.x-my-var = get("my_var")

There is also some more advanced functions, like setting multiple variables from a single string using regex.

variable.regset("ttl:d=\1s,grace:d=\2s", "^(?:.*,)?max-age=([0-9]+)(?:+([0-9]+))", beresp.http.Surrogate-Control);
set beresp.ttl = variable.get_duration("ttl");
set beresp.grace = variable.get_duration("grace");

ttl is the name of the variable, grace is the name of the second variable

\1 & \2 are simple back-references to the regex

:d specifies the type, in this case duration

Your list of user id:s

You could just set them in a comma separated string

set("moderators", ",158,114,") //Notice the starting and ending comma-sign

if(","+req.http.UserID+"," ~ get("moderators")){

     return(pass);
 }