Raible's Wiki: AppFuseSecurityMethods

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!!!This document is a work in progress, don't count on this actually working yet.

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Acegi Security is a security framework that is build using the techniques of the [Spring Framework|http://springframework.org] and is made to integrate easily into projects that utilize Spring, such as any application built on AppFuse 1.4 or newer (if your AppFuse app is older than 1.4 there is a tutorial for [migrating your app to use the Spring Framework|AppFuseSpringUpgrade]). The first level of Acegi integration into AppFuse is [authentication|AppFuseAuthentication] and authorization to access URI's based on user ""roles"", and this tutorial will assume you have already completed the migration from container managed security to use Acegi authentication. The next level is to grant or deny user access to methods of our service classes based on the user's role(s). Once you have completed this you may want to go on to adding [Access Control List authorization|AppFuseSecurityACL] for a more fine grained control.

Acegi Security is a security framework that is build using the techniques of the [Spring Framework|http://springframework.org] and is made to integrate easily into projects that utilize Spring, such as any application built on AppFuse 1.4 or newer (if your AppFuse app is older than 1.4 there is a tutorial for [migrating your app to use the Spring Framework|AppFuseSpringUpgrade]). The first level of Acegi integration into AppFuse is [authentication|AppFuseAuthentication] and authorization to access URI's based on user ''roles'', and this tutorial will assume you have already completed the migration from container managed security to use Acegi authentication. The next level is to grant or deny user access to methods of our service classes based on the user's role(s). Once you have completed this you may want to go on to [Part II|AppFuseSecurityMethods2] or add [Access Control List authorization|AppFuseSecurityACL] for a more fine grained control.

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%%note __NOTE:__ This guide is currently only for the Struts version of AppFuse. Other frameworks will be added at a later date.%%

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* [1] Updating your ""roles""

* [2] Catch the AccessDeniedException

* [3] Configure the MethodSecurityInterceptor

* [1] (Optional) Add acegi {{.jar}} to your Eclipse classpath

* [2] Prepare your Actions

* [3] Update web tests

* [4] Modify Spring Configuration

* [5] Modify {{build.xml}}

* [6] Test that it all works

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!!Updating your ""roles"" [#1]

!!Add acegi .jar to your Eclipse classpath [#1]

The .jar file for acegi already exists in your project but it probably is not in your Eclipse classpath. You can find it in:

{{{myproject/lib/spring-1.1.3/acegi-security-0.7-SNAPSHOT.jar}}}

Other versions should work too, but this is what I had to start with after Matt integrated Acegi authentication.

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!!Prepare your Actions [#2]

There are two issues that will need to be dealt with in your actions. The first is we need to be able to catch a {{AccessDeniedException}} and redirect the user to a 403 error page. This is easy enough to accomplish just by adding the appropriate {{import}} and adding a {{try/catch}} block to the BaseAction.execute() method so it looks like this:

{{{

import net.sf.acegisecurity.AccessDeniedException;

}}}

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!!Catch the AccessDeniedException [#2]

[{Java2HtmlPlugin

/**

* Override the execute method in LookupDispatchAction to parse

* URLs and forward to methods without parameters. Also will

* forward to unspecified method when no parameter is present.

* <p/>

* Will forward to a 403 server error in the case the user does

* not have authorization to access a manager method being invoked.

* <p/>

* This is based on the following system:

* <p/>

* <ul>

* <li>edit*.html -> edit method</li>

* <li>save*.html -> save method</li>

* <li>view*.html -> search method</li>

* </ul>

*

* @param mapping The ActionMapping used to select this instance

* @param request The HTTP request we are processing

* @param response The HTTP response we are creating

* @param form The optional ActionForm bean for this request (if any)

* @return Describes where and how control should be forwarded.

* @throws Exception if an error occurs

*/

public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping, ActionForm form,

HttpServletRequest request,

HttpServletResponse response)

throws Exception {

// Capture an AccessDeniedException thrown by Acegi Security

// and redirect to the 403 server error page

try {

if (isCancelled(request)) {

ActionForward af = cancelled(mapping, form, request, response);

if (af != null) {

return af;

}

MessageResources resources = getResources(request);

// Identify the localized message for the cancel button

String edit = resources.getMessage(Locale.ENGLISH, "button.edit").toLowerCase();

String save = resources.getMessage(Locale.ENGLISH, "button.save").toLowerCase();

String search = resources.getMessage(Locale.ENGLISH, "button.search").toLowerCase();

String view = resources.getMessage(Locale.ENGLISH, "button.view").toLowerCase();

String[] rules = {edit, save, search, view};

// Identify the request parameter containing the method name

String parameter = mapping.getParameter();

// don't set keyName unless it's defined on the action-mapping

// no keyName -> unspecified will be called

String keyName = null;

if (parameter != null) {

keyName = request.getParameter(parameter);

}

if ((keyName == null) || (keyName.length() == 0)) {

for (int i = 0; i < rules.length; i++) {

// apply the rules for automatically appending the method name

if (request.getServletPath().indexOf(rules[i]) > -1) {

return dispatchMethod(mapping, form, request, response, rules[i]);

}

return this.unspecified(mapping, form, request, response);

}

// Identify the string to lookup

String methodName =

getMethodName(mapping, form, request, response, parameter);

return dispatchMethod(mapping, form, request, response, methodName);

} catch (AccessDeniedException ade) {

response.sendError(HttpServletResponse.SC_FORBIDDEN);

return null;

}

}]

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The second consideration for Actions is that public actions (any action that does not require the user to be logged on) can only access public methods on our manager beans and the resulting {{success}} page can only access public methods. When AppFuse comes out of the box the only action that needs to be modified is {{SignupAction}}. We will need to remove the code that ''automagically'' used to log in a user after signup. It would be possible to still do this, but it is fairly complicated and it's not really that important to me to make the user not have to log in right after creating his account. But the problem with leaving that code in is that it would cause one of the decorator pages to try and access UserManager.getUser() which is protected. This will cause an AccessDeniedException to be thrown since our user is not yet logged in. So remove this section of code from {{SignupAction}}:

[{Java2HtmlPlugin

// Set cookies for auto-magical login ;-)

String loginCookie = mgr.createLoginCookie(user.getUsername());

RequestUtil.setCookie(response, Constants.LOGIN_COOKIE,

loginCookie, request.getContextPath());

}]

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!!Configure the MethodSecurityInterceptor [#3]

!!Update web tests [#3]

Because we are no longer able to go directly from our {{SignupAction}} to {{/mainMenu.html}} we will need to modify the Canoo web test to expect to see the login page instead. In {{test/web/web-tests.xml}} update the {{Signup}} target:

{{{ <verifytitle description="view main menu" text=".*${mainMenu.title}.*" regex="true"/>}}}

to:

{{{ <verifytitle description="view login page" text=".*${login.title}.*" regex="true"/>}}}

!!Modify Spring Configuration [#4]

Here is the real meat of what we are tring to do. At this stage we will just use role based authorization, but we will explore more options after geting this to work. We will need to modify two spring files. First we will define the security interceptor in {{web/applicationContext-security.xml}} by adding the following bean definition.

{{{

<value>

org.appfuse.service.UserManager.getUser=admin,tomcat

org.appfuse.service.UserManager.getUsers=admin

org.appfuse.service.UserManager.removeUser=admin

</value>

</property>

</bean>}}}

Let's take a minute to look at what this is doing. We are reusing the {{authenticationManager}} and the {{accessDecisionManager}} from the {{filterInvocationInterceptor}} that controls access to specific URI's. So now we are stating which roles are needed to access specific methods of the {{UserManager}}. Because we have not defined any wildcards any method not listed is considered public and does not require the user to be logged in to access.

Next we need to configure the {{userManager}} to utilize the {{userManagerSecurity}} bean we just defined. Edit the {{userManager}} bean in {{src/service/**/service/applicationContext-service.xml}} to look like this:

{{{ <bean id="userManager" parent="txProxyTemplate">

</bean>

</property>

<props>

<prop key="save*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>

<prop key="remove*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>

<prop key="*LoginCookie">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>

<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>

</props>

</property>

<list>

</list>

</property>

</bean>}}}

You can see the comment tags surrounding the interceptor so we can remove the method security during the unit tests.

!!Modify {{build.xml}} [#5]

Now we need to modify {{build.xml}} to take advantage of those comment tags we just added to {{applicationContext-security.xml}}. In the {{test-module}} target we need to add a regular expression replace task to remove the XML between out comment tags. I changed the beginning of {{test-module}} target to look like this:

{{{ <target name="test-module">

<echo level="info">Testing ${module}...</echo>

</copy>

</copy>

<replaceregexp file="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF/applicationContext-service.xml"

flags="sg">

</replaceregexp>

<junit ... }}}

!!Test that it all works [#6]

At this point we should be able to successfully run an {{ant test-all}}. The unit tests will not use the security, but the web tests will. So if you want to make sure a user cannot do something they should not be allowed to you can add a test to web-tests.xml. But if you want to see that the security works, log in as user "tomcat" and try to access [http://localhost:8080/appfuse/editProfile.html?method=search]. Because we reqire an {{admin}} role to access {{UserManager.getUsers}} you should now get a 403 Access Denied error.

Now that Acegi Method Invocation authorization is in our application and working we will need to make it grant access based on more than what roles a user has been given. For example we need to make sure a user with only the {{tomcat}} role can only use {{UserManager.getUser()}} to retreive his own account information, and {{UserManager.saveUser()}} only to update his profile. So that is our task in [Part II|AppFuseSecurityMethods2] of this tutorial.

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