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AppFuseAuthentication


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AppFuse has used Container-Managed Authentication since it was first created. However, in version 1.8, this was replaced with the Acegi Security Framework for Spring. The main reasons for this can be found on raibledesigns.com.

The purpose of this page is to describe what I did to integrate Acegi Security into 1.8. Hopefull you can use this to change your pre-1.8 applications to Acegi Security if you like. The nice thing about migrating to Acegi Security is your application becomes more portable and you don't have to worry about configuring your application server. Also, there weren't many code changes involved in the integration process - which proves Acegi Security works very well with all the existing code that talks to the security methods of the Servlet API (i.e. request.isUserInRole(), etc.)

Part II of this tutorial still needs to be written. It will show you how to remove Acegi Security from AppFuse and revert back to Container-Managed Authentication.

Table of Contents

  • [1] Add Acegi Security JARs to your project
  • [2] Create applicationContext-security.xml
  • [3] Configure filters and filter-mappings
  • [4] Remove web-security.xml from metadata/web
  • [5] Add an "enabled" variable to the User object (optional)
  • [6] Configure logging for Acegi Security
  • [7] Remove setting from LoginServlet.java to prevent duplicate logins
  • [8] Add code to logout.jsp so logout succeeds

Add Acegi Security JARs to your project [#1]

Download the following two JARs and put them in the lib/spring-1.1.3 directory of your project. If you're on an older version of Spring, that shouldn't matter.

Create applicationContext-security.xml [#2]

Download applicationContext-security.xml and put it in your web/WEB-INF directory. Make sure your metadata/web/web-settings.xml file loads this file as part of the ContextLoaderListener. For AppFuse 1.7+, this should look as follows:
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext-*.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>

Configure filters and filter-mappings [#3]

Add Acegi Security's filter to the top of metadata/web/filters.xml:
    <filter>
        <filter-name>securityFilter</filter-name>
        <filter-class>net.sf.acegisecurity.util.FilterToBeanProxy</filter-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>targetClass</param-name>
            <param-value>net.sf.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy</param-value>
        </init-param>
    </filter>

Add filter-mappings for each of these filters. Put the following XML at the top of the metadata/web/filter-mappings.xml file:

    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>securityFilter</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>

Remove web-security.xml from metadata/web [#4]

Delete the file metadata/web/web-security.xml. This is no longer needed since the security settings are now controlled by the applicationContext-security.xml file.

Add an "enabled" variable to the User object [#5]

NOTE: If you don't care about enabling/disabling users, you can skip this section and just change the "usersByUsernameQuery" property in applicationContext-security.xml to be:
SELECT username,password,enabled as 'true' FROM app_user WHERE username = ?

One nice feature in Acegi Security is the ability to enable/disable users. In order to use this feature, you'll have to add an "enabled" property to the User object. This affects several areas of an AppFuse application. You will need to modify your code in the following areas to handle this.

Step 1. Add a "enabled" variable to the User.java class, including getters and setters. Also add this variable to the equals(), hashCode() and toString() methods.


    protected Boolean enabled;

    /**
     @return Returns the enabled.
     * @hibernate.property column="enabled"
     */
    public Boolean getEnabled() {
        return enabled;
    }

    /**
     @param enabled The enabled to set.
     */
    public void setEnabled(Boolean enabled) {
        this.enabled = enabled;
    }

If you're using iBATIS, you will need to add the "enabled" column to the SQL in UserSQL.xml. You will also need to add "enabled bit" as a column definition for the "app_user" table in metadata/sql/mysql-create-tables.sql.

Step 2. In your controller/page class that handles signup, enable the user before they're saved (Spring example diff):


user.setEnabled(Boolean.TRUE);

Another thing you could do is leave them disabled and change the e-mail that's sent go to an administrator. Then the administrator can enable them and send an e-mail. The above behavior is to keep consistency with current AppFuse functionality.

Step 3. In metadata/sql/sample-data.xml, add an "enabled" <column> to the "app_user" table. This should have a <value> of "1" for all users - so they're enabled and can login.

Step 4. For all the languages/ResourceBundles your application supports, you need to add a label key to display this property on the UI. Below are the translations for the default ResourceBundles. If you're using Struts, this key should be "userForm.enabled" instead of "user.enabled".

  • ApplicationResources_en.properties: user.enabled=Enabled
  • ApplicationResources_es.properties: user.enabled=Permitido
  • ApplicationResources_fr.properties: user.enabled=Permis
  • ApplicationResources_nl.properties: user.enabled=Toegelaten
  • ApplicationResources_pt_BR.properties: user.enabled=Permitido
  • ApplicationResources_zh_CN.properties: user.enabled=使能
NOTE: I translated "enabled" with Google, so please let me know if there's a more accurate translation.

Step 5. When editing a user's record, an administrator should be able to enabled/disable a user. When a user is editing their own profile, the disabled field should be hidden, so they cannot edit it. Below are links to the CVS diffs for the various frameworks to show you what you need to change.

Configure logging for Acegi Security [#6]

In web/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties, add a setting to control the logging for Acegi Security.
log4j.logger.net.sf.acegisecurity=WARN

Remove setting from LoginServlet.java to prevent duplicate logins [#7]

In LoginServet.java, remove the initial if statement at the beginning of the execute method. This involves deleting the following lines of code.


    // if user is already authenticated, it means they probably bookmarked
    // or typed in the URL to login.jsp directly, route them to the main
    // menu is this is the case
    if (request.getRemoteUser() != null) {
        if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {
            log.debug("User '" + request.getRemoteUser() +
                      "' already logged in, routing to mainMenu");
        }

        response.sendRedirect(request.getContextPath() "/mainMenu.html");

        return;
    }

Add code to logout.jsp sp logout succeeds [#8]

In web/logout.jsp, add code to invalidate the session (before the redirect). Invalidating the session in LoginFilter.java should work, but it doesn't.
<% session.invalidate(); %>

<c:redirect url="/mainMenu.html"/>

Also, Acegi can print out more informative error messages when login fails. To see these messages, add the following to web/pages/loginForm.jsp - right after the password.mismatch message.

<c:out value="${sessionScope.ACEGI_SECURITY_LAST_EXCEPTION.message}"/>


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This particular version was published on 06-Nov-2006 13:52:43 MST by MattRaible.