AppFuseSecurityMethods

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Acegi Security is a security framework that is build using the techniques of the Spring Framework 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). The first level of Acegi integration into AppFuse is authentication 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 or add Access Control List authorization for a more fine grained control.

Table of Contents

• [0] Prerequisites
• [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

Prerequisites [#0]

You will also have to replace container managed security with the Acegi FilterInvocation Security Interceptor.

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

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

Prepare your Actions [#2]

import net.sf.acegisecurity.AccessDeniedException;

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:

Update web tests [#3]

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

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

Modify Spring Configuration [#4]

   <bean id="userManagerSecurity" class="net.sf.acegisecurity.intercept.method.aopalliance.MethodSecurityInterceptor">
      <property name="authenticationManager"><ref bean="authenticationManager"/></property>
      <property name="accessDecisionManager"><ref local="accessDecisionManager"/></property>
      <property name="objectDefinitionSource">
         <value>
            org.appfuse.service.UserManager.getUser=admin,tomcat
            org.appfuse.service.UserManager.getUsers=admin
            org.appfuse.service.UserManager.removeUser=admin
         </value>
      </property>
   </bean>

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">
        <property name="target">
            <bean class="org.appfuse.service.impl.UserManagerImpl">
                <property name="userDAO"><ref bean="userDAO"/></property>
            </bean>
        </property>
		<!-- Override default transaction attributes b/c of LoginCookie methods -->
        <property name="transactionAttributes">
            <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>
        <!--  REMOVE DURING TEST: Start -->
        <property name="preInterceptors">
            <list>
                <ref bean="userManagerSecurity"/>
            </list>
        </property>
        <!--  REMOVE DURING TEST: End   -->
    </bean>

Modify build.xml [#5]

    <target name="test-module">
        <!-- Inputs: module, test.classpath -->
        <echo level="info">Testing ${module}...</echo>
        <mkdir dir="${test.dir}/data"/>
        <propertycopy name="testcase" from="${module}-testcase" silent="true"/>
        <!-- Replace tokens in test properties files -->
        <copy todir="${test.dir}/${module}/classes">
            <fileset dir="test/${module}" excludes="**/*.java"/>
            <filterset refid="variables.to.replace"/>
        </copy>     
        <!-- Use test-specific XML files -->
        <copy todir="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF" overwrite="true">
            <fileset dir="test" includes="*.xml"/>
        </copy>
    	<!-- Remove configurations that should not be enabled during testing -->
    	<replaceregexp file="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF/applicationContext-service.xml"
    		flags="sg">
    		<regexp pattern="REMOVE DURING TEST: Start.*REMOVE DURING TEST: End" />
    		<substitution expression="REMOVED DURING TESTING" />
    	</replaceregexp>
        <property name="additional.src.dirs" value=""/>
        <junit ... 

Test that it all works [#6]

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 of this tutorial.