@Bean
public ProviderSignInController providerSignInController() {
    return new ProviderSignInController(connectionFactoryLocator(), 
        usersConnectionRepository(), new SimpleSignInAdapter());
}
		

<bean class="org.springframework.social.connect.signin.web.ProviderSignInController">
    <!-- relies on by-type autowiring for the constructor-args -->    
</bean>
		

@Bean
public ProviderSignInController providerSignInController() {
    ProviderSignInController controller = new ProviderSignInController(connectionFactoryLocator(), 
        usersConnectionRepository(), new SimpleSignInAdapter());
    controller.setApplicationUrl(environment.getProperty("application.url"));
    return controller;
}
		

<bean class="org.springframework.social.connect.signin.web.ProviderSignInController">
    <!-- relies on by-type autowiring for the constructor-args -->    
    <property name="applicationUrl" value="${application.url}" />
</bean>
		

As shown in the Java-based configuration above, ProviderSignInController depends on a handful of other objects to do its job.

When using XML configuration, it isn't necessary to explicitly configure these constructor arguments because ProviderSignInController's constructor is annotated with @Inject. Those dependencies will be given to ProviderSignInController via autowiring. You'll still need to make sure they're available as beans in the Spring application context so that they can be autowired.

You should have already configured most of these dependencies when setting up connection support (in the previous chapter). But when used with ProviderSignInController, you should configure them to be created as scoped proxies:

@Bean
@Scope(value="singleton", proxyMode=ScopedProxyMode.INTERFACES)
public ConnectionFactoryLocator connectionFactoryLocator() {
    ConnectionFactoryRegistry registry = new ConnectionFactoryRegistry();
    
    registry.addConnectionFactory(new FacebookConnectionFactory(
        environment.getProperty("facebook.clientId"),
        environment.getProperty("facebook.clientSecret")));
            
    registry.addConnectionFactory(new TwitterConnectionFactory(
        environment.getProperty("twitter.consumerKey"),
        environment.getProperty("twitter.consumerSecret")));
            
    return registry;
}

@Bean
@Scope(value="singleton", proxyMode=ScopedProxyMode.INTERFACES)
public UsersConnectionRepository usersConnectionRepository() {
    return new JdbcUsersConnectionRepository(dataSource, connectionFactoryLocator(), textEncryptor);
}
			

In the event that the sign in attempt fails, the sign in attempt will be stored in the session to be used to present a sign-up page to the user (see Section 5.3, “Signing up after a failed sign in”). By configuring ConnectionFactoryLocator and UsersConnectionRepository as scoped proxies, it enables the proxies to be carried along with the sign in attempt in the session rather than the actual objects themselves.

The SignInAdapter is exclusively used for provider sign in and so a SignInAdapter bean will need to be added to the configuration. But first, you'll need to write an implementation of the SignInAdapter interface.

The SignInAdapter interface is defined as follows:

public interface SignInAdapter {
    String signIn(String userId, Connection<?> connection, NativeWebRequest request);
}
			

The signIn() method takes the local application user's user ID normalized as a String. No other credentials are necessary here because by the time this method is called the user will have signed into the provider and their connection with that provider has been used to prove the user's identity. Implementations of this interface should use this user ID to authenticate the user to the application.

Different applications will implement security differently, so each application must implement SignInAdapter in a way that fits its unique security scheme. For example, suppose that an application's security is based on Spring Security and simply uses a user's account ID as their principal. In that case, a simple implementation of SignInAdapter might look like this:

@Service
public class SpringSecuritySignInAdapter implements SignInAdapter {
    public String signIn(String localUserId, Connection<?> connection, NativeWebRequest request) {
        SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication(
            new UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(localUserId, null, null));
        return null;
    }
}
			

With ProviderSignInController and a SignInAdapter configured, the backend support for provider sign in is in place. The last thing to do is to add a sign in button to your application that will kick off the authentication flow with ProviderSignInController.

For example, the following HTML snippet adds a "Signin with Twitter" button to a page:

<form id="tw_signin" action="<c:url value="/signin/twitter"/>" method="POST">
  <button type="submit">
    <img src="<c:url value="/resources/social/twitter/sign-in-with-twitter-d.png"/>" />
  </button>
</form>
			

Notice that the path used in the form's action attribute maps to the first step in ProviderSignInController's flow. In this case, the provider is identified as "twitter".

Clicking this button will trigger a POST request to "/signin/twitter", kicking off the Twitter sign in flow. If the user has not yet signed into Twitter, the user will be presented with the following page from Twitter:

After signing in, the flow will redirect back to the application to complete the sign in process.

By default, the sign up URL is "/signup", relative to the application root. You can override that default by setting the signUpUrl property on the controller. For example, the following configuration of ProviderSignInController sets the sign up URL to "/register":

@Bean
public ProviderSignInController providerSignInController() {
    ProviderSignInController controller = new ProviderSignInController(connectionFactoryLocator(), 
        usersConnectionRepository(), new SimpleSignInAdapter());
    controller.setSignUpUrl("/register");
    return controller;
}
			

Or to set the sign up URL using XML configuration:

<bean class="org.springframework.social.connect.signin.web.ProviderSignInController">
    <property name="signUpUrl" value="/register" />
</bean>
			

Before redirecting to the sign up page, ProviderSignInController collects some information about the authentication attempt. This information can be used to prepopulate the sign up form and then, after successful sign up, to establish a connection between the new account and the provider account.

To prepopulate the sign up form, you can fetch the user profile data from a connection retrieved from ProviderSignInUtils.getConnection(). For example, consider this Spring MVC controller method that setups up the sign up form with a SignupForm to bind to the sign up form:

@RequestMapping(value="/signup", method=RequestMethod.GET)
public SignupForm signupForm(WebRequest request) {
    Connection<?> connection = ProviderSignInUtils.getConnection(request);
    if (connection != null) {
        return SignupForm.fromProviderUser(connection.fetchUserProfile());
    } else {
        return new SignupForm();
    }
}
			

If ProviderSignInUtils.getConnection() returns a connection, that means there was a failed provider sign in attempt that can be completed if the user registers to the application. In that case, a SignupForm object is created from the user profile data obtained from the connection's fetchUserProfile() method. Within fromProviderUser(), the SignupForm properties may be set like this:

public static SignupForm fromProviderUser(UserProfile providerUser) {
    SignupForm form = new SignupForm();
    form.setFirstName(providerUser.getFirstName());
    form.setLastName(providerUser.getLastName());
    form.setUsername(providerUser.getUsername());
    form.setEmail(providerUser.getEmail());
    return form;
}
			

Here, the SignupForm is created with the user's first name, last name, username, and email from the UserProfile. In addition, UserProfile also has a getName() method which will return the user's full name as given by the provider.

The availability of UserProfile's properties will depend on the provider. Twitter, for example, does not provide a user's email address, so the getEmail() method will always return null after a sign in attempt with Twitter.

After the user has successfully signed up in your application a connection can be created between the new local user account and their provider account. To complete the connection call ProviderSignInUtils.handlePostSignUp(). For example, the following method handles the sign up form submission, creates an account and then calls ProviderSignInUtils.handlePostSignUp() to complete the connection:

@RequestMapping(value="/signup", method=RequestMethod.POST)
public String signup(@Valid SignupForm form, BindingResult formBinding, WebRequest request) {
    if (formBinding.hasErrors()) {
        return null;
    }
    Account account = createAccount(form, formBinding);
    if (account != null) {
        SignInUtils.signin(account.getUsername());
        ProviderSignInUtils.handlePostSignUp(account.getUsername(), request);
        return "redirect:/";
    }
    return null;
}
			

To enable implicit sign up, you must create an implementation of the ConnectionSignUp interface and inject an instance of that ConnectionSignUp to the connection repository. The ConnectionSignUp interface is simple, with only a single method to implement:

public interface ConnectionSignUp {
    String execute(Connection<?> connection);
}
			

The execute() method is given a Connection that it can use to retrieve information about the user. It can then use that information to create a new local application user and return the new local user ID. For example, the following implementation fetches the user's provider profile and uses it to create a new account:

public class AccountConnectionSignUp implements ConnectionSignUp {

    private final AccountRepository accountRepository;

    public AccountConnectionSignUp(AccountRepository accountRepository) {
        this.accountRepository = accountRepository;
    }

    public String execute(Connection<?> connection) {
        UserProfile profile = connection.fetchUserProfile();
        Account account = new Account(profile.getUsername(), profile.getFirstName(), profile.getLastName());
        accountRepository.createAccount(account);
        return account.getUsername();
    }
	
}
			

If there is any problem in creating the new user implicitly (for example, if the implicitly chosen username is already taken) execute() may return null to indicate that the user could not be created implicitly. This will ultimately result in ProviderSignInController redirecting the user to the signup page.

Once you've written a ConnectionSignUp for your application, you'll need to inject it into the UsersConnectionRepository. In Java-based configuration:

@Bean
@Scope(value="singleton", proxyMode=ScopedProxyMode.INTERFACES) 
public UsersConnectionRepository usersConnectionRepository(AccountRepository accountRepository) {
    JdbcUsersConnectionRepository repository = new JdbcUsersConnectionRepository(
        dataSource, connectionFactoryLocator(), Encryptors.noOpText());
    repository.setConnectionSignUp(new AccountConnectionSignUp(accountRepository));
    return repository;
}