Security Namespace Configuration

The namespace is designed to capture the most common uses of the framework and provide a simplified and concise syntax for enabling them within an application. The design is based around the large-scale dependencies within the framework, and can be divided up into the following areas:

We'll see how to configure these in the following sections.

The first thing you need to do is add the following filter declaration to your web.xml file:

<filter>
  <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
  <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
  <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
  <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
      

This provides a hook into the Spring Security web infrastructure. DelegatingFilterProxy is a Spring Framework class which delegates to a filter implementation which is defined as a Spring bean in your application context. In this case, the bean is named “springSecurityFilterChain”, which is an internal infrastructure bean created by the namespace to handle web security. Note that you should not use this bean name yourself. Once you've added this to your web.xml, you're ready to start editing your application context file. Web security services are configured using the <http> element.

All you need to enable web security to begin with is

  <http auto-config='true'>
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER" />
  </http>
  

Which says that we want all URLs within our application to be secured, requiring the role ROLE_USER to access them. The <http> element is the parent for all web-related namespace functionality. The <intercept-url> element defines a pattern which is matched against the URLs of incoming requests using an ant path style syntax^[2]. You can also use regular-expression matching as an alternative (see the namespace appendix for more details). The access attribute defines the access requirements for requests matching the given pattern. With the default configuration, this is typically a comma-separated list of roles, one of which a user must have to be allowed to make the request. The prefix “ROLE_” is a marker which indicates that a simple comparison with the user's authorities should be made. In other words, a normal role-based check should be used. Access-control in Spring Security is not limited to the use of simple roles (hence the use of the prefix to differentiate between different types of security attributes). We'll see later how the interpretation can vary^[3].

Note

You can use multiple <intercept-url> elements to define different access requirements for different sets of URLs, but they will be evaluated in the order listed and the first match will be used. So you must put the most specific matches at the top. You can also add a method attribute to limit the match to a particular HTTP method (GET, POST, PUT etc.). If a request matches multiple patterns, the method-specific match will take precedence regardless of ordering.

To add some users, you can define a set of test data directly in the namespace:

  <authentication-manager>
    <authentication-provider>
      <user-service>
        <user name="jimi" password="jimispassword" authorities="ROLE_USER, ROLE_ADMIN" />
        <user name="bob" password="bobspassword" authorities="ROLE_USER" />
      </user-service>
    </authentication-provider>
  </authentication-manager>
  
        

The configuration above defines two users, their passwords and their roles within the application (which will be used for access control). It is also possible to load user information from a standard properties file using the properties attribute on user-service. See the section on in-memory authentication for more details on the file format. Using the <authentication-provider> element means that the user information will be used by the authentication manager to process authentication requests. You can have multiple <authentication-provider> elements to define different authentication sources and each will be consulted in turn.

At this point you should be able to start up your application and you will be required to log in to proceed. Try it out, or try experimenting with the “tutorial” sample application that comes with the project. The above configuration actually adds quite a few services to the application because we have used the auto-config attribute. For example, form-based login processing is automatically enabled.

  <http>
    <form-login />
    <http-basic />
    <logout />
  </http>
  

You might be wondering where the login form came from when you were prompted to log in, since we made no mention of any HTML files or JSPs. In fact, since we didn't explicitly set a URL for the login page, Spring Security generates one automatically, based on the features that are enabled and using standard values for the URL which processes the submitted login, the default target URL the user will be sent to after loggin in and so on. However, the namespace offers plenty of support to allow you to customize these options. For example, if you want to supply your own login page, you could use:

  <http auto-config='true'>
    <intercept-url pattern="/login.jsp*" access="IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY"/>
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER" />
    <form-login login-page='/login.jsp'/>
  </http>
  
    

Note that you can still use auto-config. The form-login element just overrides the default settings. Also note that we've added an extra intercept-url element to say that any requests for the login page should be available to anonymous users ^[5]. Otherwise the request would be matched by the pattern /** and it wouldn't be possible to access the login page itself! This is a common configuration error and will result in an infinite loop in the application. Spring Security will emit a warning in the log if your login page appears to be secured. It is also possible to have all requests matching a particular pattern bypass the security filter chain completely, by defining a separate http element for the pattern like this:

  <http pattern="/css/**" security="none"/>
  <http pattern="/login.jsp*" security="none"/>

  <http auto-config='true'>
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER" />
    <form-login login-page='/login.jsp'/>
  </http>
  
                

From Spring Security 3.1 it is now possible to use multiple http elements to define separate security filter chain configurations for different request patterns. If the pattern attribute is omitted from an http element, it matches all requests. Creating an unsecured pattern is a simple example of this syntax, where the pattern is mapped to an empty filter chain ^[6]. We'll look at this new syntax in more detail in the chapter on the Security Filter Chain.

It's important to realise that these unsecured requests will be completely oblivious to any Spring Security web-related configuration or additional attributes such as requires-channel, so you will not be able to access information on the current user or call secured methods during the request. Use access='IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY' as an alternative if you still want the security filter chain to be applied.

If you want to use basic authentication instead of form login, then change the configuration to

  <http auto-config='true'>
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER" />
    <http-basic />
  </http>
  
    

Basic authentication will then take precedence and will be used to prompt for a login when a user attempts to access a protected resource. Form login is still available in this configuration if you wish to use it, for example through a login form embedded in another web page.

  <http pattern="/login.htm*" security="none"/>
  <http>
    <intercept-url pattern='/**' access='ROLE_USER' />
    <form-login login-page='/login.htm' default-target-url='/home.htm'
            always-use-default-target='true' />
  </http>
           

The logout element adds support for logging out by navigating to a particular URL. The default logout URL is /j_spring_security_logout, but you can set it to something else using the logout-url attribute. More information on other available attributes may be found in the namespace appendix.

In practice you will need a more scalable source of user information than a few names added to the application context file. Most likely you will want to store your user information in something like a database or an LDAP server. LDAP namespace configuration is dealt with in the LDAP chapter, so we won't cover it here. If you have a custom implementation of Spring Security's UserDetailsService, called "myUserDetailsService" in your application context, then you can authenticate against this using

  <authentication-manager>
    <authentication-provider user-service-ref='myUserDetailsService'/>
  </authentication-manager>
  
        

If you want to use a database, then you can use

  <authentication-manager>
    <authentication-provider>
      <jdbc-user-service data-source-ref="securityDataSource"/>
    </authentication-provider>
  </authentication-manager>
  
        

Where “securityDataSource” is the name of a DataSource bean in the application context, pointing at a database containing the standard Spring Security user data tables. Alternatively, you could configure a Spring Security JdbcDaoImpl bean and point at that using the user-service-ref attribute:

  <authentication-manager>
    <authentication-provider user-service-ref='myUserDetailsService'/>
  </authentication-manager>

  <beans:bean id="myUserDetailsService"
      class="org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.jdbc.JdbcDaoImpl">
    <beans:property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
  </beans:bean>
  
        

You can also use standard AuthenticationProvider beans as follows

  <authentication-manager>
    <authentication-provider ref='myAuthenticationProvider'/>
  </authentication-manager>
  
        

where myAuthenticationProvider is the name of a bean in your application context which implements AuthenticationProvider. You can use multiple authentication-provider elements, in which case the providers will be queried in the order they are declared. See Section 3.6, “The Authentication Manager and the Namespace” for more on information on how the Spring Security AuthenticationManager is configured using the namespace.

<authentication-manager>
  <authentication-provider>
    <password-encoder hash="sha"/>
    <user-service>
      <user name="jimi" password="d7e6351eaa13189a5a3641bab846c8e8c69ba39f"
            authorities="ROLE_USER, ROLE_ADMIN" />
      <user name="bob" password="4e7421b1b8765d8f9406d87e7cc6aa784c4ab97f"
            authorities="ROLE_USER" />
    </user-service>
  </authentication-provider>
</authentication-manager>
  
          

  <password-encoder hash="sha">
    <salt-source user-property="username"/>
  </password-encoder>
    

See the separate Remember-Me chapter for information on remember-me namespace configuration.

If your application supports both HTTP and HTTPS, and you require that particular URLs can only be accessed over HTTPS, then this is directly supported using the requires-channel attribute on <intercept-url>:

  <http>
    <intercept-url pattern="/secure/**" access="ROLE_USER" requires-channel="https"/>
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER" requires-channel="any"/>
    ...
  </http>
        

With this configuration in place, if a user attempts to access anything matching the "/secure/**" pattern using HTTP, they will first be redirected to an HTTPS URL ^[7]. The available options are "http", "https" or "any". Using the value "any" means that either HTTP or HTTPS can be used.

If your application uses non-standard ports for HTTP and/or HTTPS, you can specify a list of port mappings as follows:

  <http>
    ...
    <port-mappings>
      <port-mapping http="9080" https="9443"/>
    </port-mappings>
  </http>
                

Note that in order to be truly secure, an application should not use HTTP at all or switch between HTTP and HTTPS. It should start in HTTPS (with the user entering an HTTPS URL) and use a secure connection throughout to avoid any possibility of man-in-the-middle attacks.

The namespace supports OpenID login either instead of, or in addition to normal form-based login, with a simple change:

  <http>
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER" />
    <openid-login />
  </http>

You should then register yourself with an OpenID provider (such as myopenid.com), and add the user information to your in-memory <user-service> :

  <user name="http://jimi.hendrix.myopenid.com/" authorities="ROLE_USER" />

You should be able to login using the myopenid.com site to authenticate. It is also possible to select a specific UserDetailsService bean for use OpenID by setting the user-service-ref attribute on the openid-login element. See the previous section on authentication providers for more information. Note that we have omitted the password attribute from the above user configuration, since this set of user data is only being used to load the authorities for the user. A random password will be generate internally, preventing you from accidentally using this user data as an authentication source elsewhere in your configuration.

 <openid-login>
  <attribute-exchange>
    <openid-attribute name="email" type="http://axschema.org/contact/email" required="true"/>
    <openid-attribute name="name" type="http://axschema.org/namePerson"/>
  </attribute-exchange>
 </openid-login>

OpenIDAuthenticationToken token =
    (OpenIDAuthenticationToken)SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication();
List<OpenIDAttribute> attributes = token.getAttributes();

If you've used Spring Security before, you'll know that the framework maintains a chain of filters in order to apply its services. You may want to add your own filters to the stack at particular locations or use a Spring Security filter for which there isn't currently a namespace configuration option (CAS, for example). Or you might want to use a customized version of a standard namespace filter, such as the UsernamePasswordAuthenticationFilter which is created by the <form-login> element, taking advantage of some of the extra configuration options which are available by using the bean explicitly. How can you do this with namespace configuration, since the filter chain is not directly exposed?

The order of the filters is always strictly enforced when using the namespace. When the application context is being created, the filter beans are sorted by the namespace handling code and the standard Spring Security filters each have an alias in the namespace and a well-known position.

Note

In previous versions, the sorting took place after the filter instances had been created, during post-processing of the application context. In version 3.0+ the sorting is now done at the bean metadata level, before the classes have been instantiated. This has implications for how you add your own filters to the stack as the entire filter list must be known during the parsing of the <http> element, so the syntax has changed slightly in 3.0.

The filters, aliases and namespace elements/attributes which create the filters are shown in Table 3.1, “Standard Filter Aliases and Ordering”. The filters are listed in the order in which they occur in the filter chain.

You can add your own filter to the stack, using the custom-filter element and one of these names to specify the position your filter should appear at:

  <http>
     <custom-filter position="FORM_LOGIN_FILTER" ref="myFilter" />
  </http>

  <beans:bean id="myFilter" class="com.mycompany.MySpecialAuthenticationFilter"/>
  
  

You can also use the after or before attributes if you want your filter to be inserted before or after another filter in the stack. The names "FIRST" and "LAST" can be used with the position attribute to indicate that you want your filter to appear before or after the entire stack, respectively.

Avoiding filter position conflicts

If you are inserting a custom filter which may occupy the same position as one of the standard filters created by the namespace then it's important that you don't include the namespace versions by mistake. Avoid using the auto-config attribute and remove any elements which create filters whose functionality you want to replace. Note that you can't replace filters which are created by the use of the <http> element itself - SecurityContextPersistenceFilter, ExceptionTranslationFilter or FilterSecurityInterceptor. Some other filters are added by default, but you can disable them. An AnonymousAuthenticationFilter is added by default and unless you have session-fixation protection disabled, a SessionManagementFilter will also be added to the filter chain.

If you're replacing a namespace filter which requires an authentication entry point (i.e. where the authentication process is triggered by an attempt by an unauthenticated user to access to a secured resource), you will need to add a custom entry point bean too.

This element is used to enable annotation-based security in your application (by setting the appropriate attributes on the element), and also to group together security pointcut declarations which will be applied across your entire application context. You should only declare one <global-method-security> element. The following declaration would enable support for Spring Security's @Secured:

  <global-method-security secured-annotations="enabled" />
  

Adding an annotation to a method (on an class or interface) would then limit the access to that method accordingly. Spring Security's native annotation support defines a set of attributes for the method. These will be passed to the AccessDecisionManager for it to make the actual decision:

  public interface BankService {

    @Secured("IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY")
    public Account readAccount(Long id);

    @Secured("IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY")
    public Account[] findAccounts();

    @Secured("ROLE_TELLER")
    public Account post(Account account, double amount);
  }

Support for JSR-250 annotations can be enabled using

  <global-method-security jsr250-annotations="enabled" />
  
        

These are standards-based and allow simple role-based constraints to be applied but do not have the power Spring Security's native annotations. To use the new expression-based syntax, you would use

  <global-method-security pre-post-annotations="enabled" />
  

and the equivalent Java code would be

   public interface BankService {

     @PreAuthorize("isAnonymous()")
     public Account readAccount(Long id);

     @PreAuthorize("isAnonymous()")
     public Account[] findAccounts();

     @PreAuthorize("hasAuthority('ROLE_TELLER')")
     public Account post(Account account, double amount);
   }
        

Expression-based annotations are a good choice if you need to define simple rules that go beyond checking the role names against the user's list of authorities.

	Note
	The annotated methods will only be secured for instances which are defined as Spring beans (in the same application context in which method-security is enabled). If you want to secure instances which are not created by Spring (using the new operator, for example) then you need to use AspectJ.

	Note
	You can enable more than one type of annotation in the same application, but only one type should be used for any interface or class as the behaviour will not be well-defined otherwise. If two annotations are found which apply to a particular method, then only one of them will be applied.

  <global-method-security>
    <protect-pointcut expression="execution(* com.mycompany.*Service.*(..))"
         access="ROLE_USER"/>
  </global-method-security>

          

If you need to use a more complicated access control strategy then it is easy to set an alternative for both method and web security.

For method security, you do this by setting the access-decision-manager-ref attribute on global-method-security to the id of the appropriate AccessDecisionManager bean in the application context:

  <global-method-security access-decision-manager-ref="myAccessDecisionManagerBean">
    ...
  </global-method-security>
  

The syntax for web security is the same, but on the http element:

  <http access-decision-manager-ref="myAccessDecisionManagerBean">
    ...
  </http>