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.

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:

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 getRootConfigClasses()

public class MvcWebApplicationInitializer extends
		AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

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

	// ... other overrides ...
}

Generally, LogoutHandler implementations indicate classes that are able to participate in logout handling. They are expected to be invoked to perform necessary cleanup. As such they should not throw exceptions. Various implementations are provided:

Please see Section 17.4, “Remember-Me Interfaces and Implementations” for details.

Instead of providing LogoutHandler implementations directly, the fluent API also provides shortcuts that provide the respective LogoutHandler implementations under the covers. E.g. deleteCookies() allows specifying the names of one or more cookies to be removed on logout success. This is a shortcut compared to adding a CookieClearingLogoutHandler.

The LogoutSuccessHandler is called after a successful logout by the LogoutFilter, to handle e.g. redirection or forwarding to the appropriate destination. Note that the interface is almost the same as the LogoutHandler but may raise an exception.

The following implementations are provided:

As mentioned above, you don’t need to specify the SimpleUrlLogoutSuccessHandler directly. Instead, the fluent API provides a shortcut by setting the logoutSuccessUrl(). This will setup the SimpleUrlLogoutSuccessHandler under the covers. The provided URL will be redirected to after a logout has occurred. The default is /login?logout.

The HttpStatusReturningLogoutSuccessHandler can be interesting in REST API type scenarios. Instead of redirecting to a URL upon the successful logout, this LogoutSuccessHandler allows you to provide a plain HTTP status code to be returned. If not configured a status code 200 will be returned by default.

We have already seen an example of configuring in memory authentication for a single user. Below is an example to configure multiple users:

@Autowired
public void configureGlobal(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {
	auth
		.inMemoryAuthentication()
			.withUser("user").password("password").roles("USER").and()
			.withUser("admin").password("password").roles("USER", "ADMIN");
}

You can find the updates to suppport JDBC based authentication. The example below assumes that you have already defined a DataSource within your application. The jdbc-javaconfig sample provides a complete example of using JDBC based authentication.

@Autowired
private DataSource dataSource;

@Autowired
public void configureGlobal(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {
	auth
		.jdbcAuthentication()
			.dataSource(dataSource)
			.withDefaultSchema()
			.withUser("user").password("password").roles("USER").and()
			.withUser("admin").password("password").roles("USER", "ADMIN");
}

You can find the updates to suppport LDAP based authentication. The ldap-javaconfig sample provides a complete example of using LDAP based authentication.

@Autowired
private DataSource dataSource;

@Autowired
public void configureGlobal(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {
	auth
		.ldapAuthentication()
			.userDnPatterns("uid={0},ou=people")
			.groupSearchBase("ou=groups");
}

The example above uses the following LDIF and an embedded Apache DS LDAP instance.

users.ldif. 

dn: ou=groups,dc=springframework,dc=org
objectclass: top
objectclass: organizationalUnit
ou: groups

dn: ou=people,dc=springframework,dc=org
objectclass: top
objectclass: organizationalUnit
ou: people

dn: uid=admin,ou=people,dc=springframework,dc=org
objectclass: top
objectclass: person
objectclass: organizationalPerson
objectclass: inetOrgPerson
cn: Rod Johnson
sn: Johnson
uid: admin
userPassword: password

dn: uid=user,ou=people,dc=springframework,dc=org
objectclass: top
objectclass: person
objectclass: organizationalPerson
objectclass: inetOrgPerson
cn: Dianne Emu
sn: Emu
uid: user
userPassword: password

dn: cn=user,ou=groups,dc=springframework,dc=org
objectclass: top
objectclass: groupOfNames
cn: user
uniqueMember: uid=admin,ou=people,dc=springframework,dc=org
uniqueMember: uid=user,ou=people,dc=springframework,dc=org

dn: cn=admin,ou=groups,dc=springframework,dc=org
objectclass: top
objectclass: groupOfNames
cn: admin
uniqueMember: uid=admin,ou=people,dc=springframework,dc=org

You can define custom authentication by exposing a custom AuthenticationProvider as a bean. For example, the following will customize authentication assuming that SpringAuthenticationProvider implements AuthenticationProvider:

	Note
	This is only used if the AuthenticationManagerBuilder has not been populated

@Bean
public SpringAuthenticationProvider springAuthenticationProvider() {
	return new SpringAuthenticationProvider();
}

You can define custom authentication by exposing a custom UserDetailsService as a bean. For example, the following will customize authentication assuming that SpringDataUserDetailsService implements UserDetailsService:

	Note
	This is only used if the AuthenticationManagerBuilder has not been populated and no AuthenticationProviderBean is defined.

@Bean
public SpringDataUserDetailsService springDataUserDetailsService() {
	return new SpringDataUserDetailsService();
}

You can also customize how passwords are encoded by exposing a PasswordEncoder as a bean. For example, if you use bcrypt you can add a bean definition as shown below:

@Bean
public BCryptPasswordEncoder passwordEncoder() {
	return new BCryptPasswordEncoder();
}

We can enable annotation-based security using the @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity annotation on any @Configuration instance. For example, the following would enable Spring Security’s @Secured annotation.

@EnableGlobalMethodSecurity(securedEnabled = true)
public class MethodSecurityConfig {
// ...
}

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

@EnableGlobalMethodSecurity(jsr250Enabled = true)
public class MethodSecurityConfig {
// ...
}

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

@EnableGlobalMethodSecurity(prePostEnabled = true)
public class MethodSecurityConfig {
// ...
}

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);
}

Sometimes you may need to perform operations that are more complicated than are possible with the @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity annotation allow. For these instances, you can extend the GlobalMethodSecurityConfiguration ensuring that the @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity annotation is present on your subclass. For example, if you wanted to provide a custom MethodSecurityExpressionHandler, you could use the following configuration:

@EnableGlobalMethodSecurity(prePostEnabled = true)
public class MethodSecurityConfig extends GlobalMethodSecurityConfiguration {
	@Override
	protected MethodSecurityExpressionHandler createExpressionHandler() {
		// ... create and return custom MethodSecurityExpressionHandler ...
		return expressionHandler;
	}
}

For additional information about methods that can be overriden, refer to the GlobalMethodSecurityConfiguration Javadoc.