This version is still in development and is not considered stable yet. For the latest stable version, please use Spring Security 6.4.4!

Web Migrations

Use PathPatternRequestMatcher by Default

In Spring Security 7, AntPathRequestMatcher and MvcRequestMatcher are no longer supported and the Java DSL requires that all URIs be absolute (less any context root). At that time, Spring Security 7 will use PathPatternRequestMatcher by default.

To check how prepared you are for this change, you can publish this bean:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@Bean
PathPatternRequestMatcherBuilderFactoryBean requestMatcherBuilder() {
	return new PathPatternRequestMatcherBuilderFactoryBean();
}
@Bean
fun requestMatcherBuilder(): PathPatternRequestMatcherBuilderFactoryBean {
    return PathPatternRequestMatcherBuilderFactoryBean()
}

This will tell the Spring Security DSL to use PathPatternRequestMatcher for all request matchers that it constructs.

In the event that you are directly constructing an object (as opposed to having the DSL construct it) that has a setRequestMatcher method. you should also proactively specify a PathPatternRequestMatcher there as well.

For example, in the case of LogoutFilter, it constructs an AntPathRequestMatcher in Spring Security 6:

private RequestMatcher logoutUrl = new AntPathRequestMatcher("/logout");

and will change this to a PathPatternRequestMatcher in 7:

private RequestMatcher logoutUrl = PathPatternRequestMatcher.path().matcher("/logout");

If you are constructing your own LogoutFilter, consider calling setLogoutRequestMatcher to provide this PathPatternRequestMatcher in advance.

Include the Servlet Path Prefix in Authorization Rules

For many applications the above will make no difference since most commonly all URIs listed are matched by the default servlet.

However, if you have other servlets with servlet path prefixes, then these paths now need to be supplied separately.

For example, if I have a Spring MVC controller with @RequestMapping("/orders") and my MVC application is deployed to /mvc (instead of the default servlet), then the URI for this endpoint is /mvc/orders. Historically, the Java DSL hasn’t had a simple way to specify the servlet path prefix and Spring Security attempted to infer it.

Over time, we learned that these inference would surprise developers. Instead of taking this responsibility away from developers, now it is simpler to specify the servlet path prefix like so:

PathPatternRequestParser.Builder servlet = PathPatternRequestParser.servletPath("/mvc");
http
    .authorizeHttpRequests((authorize) -> authorize
        .requestMatchers(servlet.pattern("/orders/**").matcher()).authenticated()
    )

For paths that belong to the default servlet, use PathPatternRequestParser.path() instead:

PathPatternRequestParser.Builder request = PathPatternRequestParser.path();
http
    .authorizeHttpRequests((authorize) -> authorize
        .requestMatchers(request.pattern("/js/**").matcher()).authenticated()
    )

Note that this doesn’t address every kind of servlet since not all servlets have a path prefix. For example, expressions that match the JSP Servlet might use an ant pattern /*/.jsp.

There is not yet a general-purpose replacement for these, and so you are encouraged to use RegexRequestMatcher, like so: regexMatcher("\\.jsp$").

For many applications this will make no difference since most commonly all URIs listed are matched by the default servlet.