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

* [2] Add public Methods

* [3] Prepare your Actions

* [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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!!Add public Methods [#2]

In the case of the UserManager, we will want to add security on {{saveUser()}}

%%note __:TODO:__ Fix this... role based security on {{saveUser}} does nothing. remove the unnecessary complexity.%%

!!Prepare your Actions [#3]

!!Prepare your Actions [#2]

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}}}

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...

[{Java2HtmlPlugin

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}}}

}]

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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. 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 is would cause one of the decorator pages to try and access UserManager.getUser() which is protected and an AccessDeniedException will be thrown since our user is not yet logged in. So remove this section of code from {{SignupAction}}:

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

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 ;-)

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loginCookie, request.getContextPath());}}}

loginCookie, request.getContextPath());

}]

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!!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"/>}}}

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!!Configure the MethodSecurityInterceptor [#3]

!!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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