This version is still in development and is not considered stable yet. For the latest stable version, please use Spring Security 6.4.0!

Java Configuration

General support for Java Configuration was added to Spring Framework in Spring 3.1. Since Spring Security 3.2 there has been Spring Security Java Configuration support which enables users to easily configure Spring Security without the use of any XML.

If you are familiar with the Security Namespace Configuration then you should find quite a few similarities between it and the Security Java Configuration support.

Spring Security provides lots of sample applications which demonstrate the use of Spring Security Java Configuration.

Hello Web Security Java Configuration

The first step is to create our Spring Security Java Configuration. The configuration creates a Servlet Filter known as the springSecurityFilterChain which is responsible for all the security (protecting the application URLs, validating submitted username and passwords, redirecting to the log in form, etc) within your application. You can find the most basic example of a Spring Security Java Configuration below:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.*;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.authentication.builders.*;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configuration.*;

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig {

	@Bean
	public UserDetailsService userDetailsService() {
		InMemoryUserDetailsManager manager = new InMemoryUserDetailsManager();
		manager.createUser(User.withDefaultPasswordEncoder().username("user").password("password").roles("USER").build());
		return manager;
	}
}

There really isn’t much to this configuration, but it does a lot. You can find a summary of the features below:

AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer

The next step is to register the springSecurityFilterChain with the war. This can be done in Java Configuration with Spring’s WebApplicationInitializer support in a Servlet 3.0+ environment. Not suprisingly, Spring Security provides a base class AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer that will ensure the springSecurityFilterChain gets registered for you. The way in which we use AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer differs depending on if we are already using Spring or if Spring Security is the only Spring component in our application.

AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer without Existing Spring

If you are not using Spring or Spring MVC, you will need to pass in the WebSecurityConfig into the superclass to ensure the configuration is picked up. You can find an example below:

import org.springframework.security.web.context.*;

public class SecurityWebApplicationInitializer
	extends AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer {

	public SecurityWebApplicationInitializer() {
		super(WebSecurityConfig.class);
	}
}

The SecurityWebApplicationInitializer will do the following things:

  • Automatically register the springSecurityFilterChain Filter for every URL in your application

  • Add a ContextLoaderListener that loads the WebSecurityConfig.

AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer with Spring MVC

If we were using Spring elsewhere in our application we probably already had a WebApplicationInitializer that is loading our Spring Configuration. If we use the previous configuration we would get an error. Instead, we should register Spring Security with the existing ApplicationContext. For example, if we were using Spring MVC our SecurityWebApplicationInitializer would look something like the following:

import org.springframework.security.web.context.*;

public class SecurityWebApplicationInitializer
	extends AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer {

}

This would simply only register the springSecurityFilterChain Filter for every URL in your application. After that we would ensure that WebSecurityConfig was loaded in our existing ApplicationInitializer. For example, if we were using Spring MVC it would be added in the getServletConfigClasses()

public class MvcWebApplicationInitializer extends
		AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {
		return new Class[] { WebSecurityConfig.class, WebMvcConfig.class };
	}

	// ... other overrides ...
}

The reason for this is that Spring Security needs to be able to inspect some Spring MVC configuration in order to appropriately configure underlying request matchers, so they need to be in the same application context. Placing Spring Security in getRootConfigClasses places it into a parent application context that may not be able to find Spring MVC’s HandlerMappingIntrospector.

Configuring for Multiple Spring MVC Dispatchers

If desired, any Spring Security configuration that is unrelated to Spring MVC may be placed in a different configuration class like so:

public class MvcWebApplicationInitializer extends
		AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

	@Override
    protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {
		return new Class[] { NonWebSecurityConfig.class };
    }

	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {
		return new Class[] { WebSecurityConfig.class, WebMvcConfig.class };
	}

	// ... other overrides ...
}

This can be helpful if you have multiple instances of AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer and don’t want to duplicate the general security configuration across both of them.

HttpSecurity

Thus far our WebSecurityConfig only contains information about how to authenticate our users. How does Spring Security know that we want to require all users to be authenticated? How does Spring Security know we want to support form based authentication? Actually, there is a bean that is being invoked behind the scenes called SecurityFilterChain. It is configured with the following default implementation:

@Bean
public SecurityFilterChain filterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
	http
		.authorizeRequests(authorize -> authorize
			.anyRequest().authenticated()
		)
		.formLogin(withDefaults())
		.httpBasic(withDefaults());
	return http.build();
}

The default configuration above:

  • Ensures that any request to our application requires the user to be authenticated

  • Allows users to authenticate with form based login

  • Allows users to authenticate with HTTP Basic authentication

You will notice that this configuration is quite similar the XML Namespace configuration:

<http>
	<intercept-url pattern="/**" access="authenticated"/>
	<form-login />
	<http-basic />
</http>

Multiple HttpSecurity

We can configure multiple HttpSecurity instances just as we can have multiple <http> blocks. The key is to register multiple SecurityFilterChain @Beans. For example, the following is an example of having a different configuration for URL’s that start with /api/.

@EnableWebSecurity
public class MultiHttpSecurityConfig {
	@Bean                                                             (1)
	public UserDetailsService userDetailsService() throws Exception {
		// ensure the passwords are encoded properly
		UserBuilder users = User.withDefaultPasswordEncoder();
		InMemoryUserDetailsManager manager = new InMemoryUserDetailsManager();
		manager.createUser(users.username("user").password("password").roles("USER").build());
		manager.createUser(users.username("admin").password("password").roles("USER","ADMIN").build());
		return manager;
	}

	@Bean
	@Order(1)                                                        (2)
	public SecurityFilterChain apiFilterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
		http
			.antMatcher("/api/**")                                   (3)
			.authorizeHttpRequests(authorize -> authorize
				.anyRequest().hasRole("ADMIN")
			)
			.httpBasic(withDefaults());
		return http.build();
	}

	@Bean                                                            (4)
	public SecurityFilterChain formLoginFilterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
		http
			.authorizeHttpRequests(authorize -> authorize
				.anyRequest().authenticated()
			)
			.formLogin(withDefaults());
		return http.build();
	}
}
1 Configure Authentication as normal
2 Register an instance of SecurityFilterChain that contains @Order to specify which SecurityFilterChain should be considered first.
3 The http.antMatcher states that this HttpSecurity will only be applicable to URLs that start with /api/
4 Register another instance of SecurityFilterChain. If the URL does not start with /api/ this configuration will be used. This configuration is considered after apiFilterChain since it has an @Order value after 1 (no @Order defaults to last).

Custom DSLs

You can provide your own custom DSLs in Spring Security. For example, you might have something that looks like this:

public class MyCustomDsl extends AbstractHttpConfigurer<MyCustomDsl, HttpSecurity> {
	private boolean flag;

	@Override
	public void init(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
		// any method that adds another configurer
		// must be done in the init method
		http.csrf().disable();
	}

	@Override
	public void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
		ApplicationContext context = http.getSharedObject(ApplicationContext.class);

		// here we lookup from the ApplicationContext. You can also just create a new instance.
		MyFilter myFilter = context.getBean(MyFilter.class);
		myFilter.setFlag(flag);
		http.addFilterBefore(myFilter, UsernamePasswordAuthenticationFilter.class);
	}

	public MyCustomDsl flag(boolean value) {
		this.flag = value;
		return this;
	}

	public static MyCustomDsl customDsl() {
		return new MyCustomDsl();
	}
}
This is actually how methods like HttpSecurity.authorizeRequests() are implemented.

The custom DSL can then be used like this:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class Config {
	@Bean
	public SecurityFilterChain filterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
		http
			.apply(customDsl())
				.flag(true)
				.and()
			...;
		return http.build();
	}
}

The code is invoked in the following order:

  • Code in `Config`s configure method is invoked

  • Code in `MyCustomDsl`s init method is invoked

  • Code in `MyCustomDsl`s configure method is invoked

If you want, you can add MyCustomDsl to HttpSecurity by default by using SpringFactories. For example, you would create a resource on the classpath named META-INF/spring.factories with the following contents:

META-INF/spring.factories
org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configurers.AbstractHttpConfigurer = sample.MyCustomDsl

Users wishing to disable the default can do so explicitly.

@EnableWebSecurity
public class Config {
	@Bean
	public SecurityFilterChain filterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
		http
			.apply(customDsl()).disable()
			...;
		return http.build();
	}
}

Post Processing Configured Objects

Spring Security’s Java Configuration does not expose every property of every object that it configures. This simplifies the configuration for a majority of users. Afterall, if every property was exposed, users could use standard bean configuration.

While there are good reasons to not directly expose every property, users may still need more advanced configuration options. To address this Spring Security introduces the concept of an ObjectPostProcessor which can be used to modify or replace many of the Object instances created by the Java Configuration. For example, if you wanted to configure the filterSecurityPublishAuthorizationSuccess property on FilterSecurityInterceptor you could use the following:

@Bean
public SecurityFilterChain filterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
	http
		.authorizeRequests(authorize -> authorize
			.anyRequest().authenticated()
			.withObjectPostProcessor(new ObjectPostProcessor<FilterSecurityInterceptor>() {
				public <O extends FilterSecurityInterceptor> O postProcess(
						O fsi) {
					fsi.setPublishAuthorizationSuccess(true);
					return fsi;
				}
			})
		);
	return http.build();
}