Spring Security - Method Level Access Control

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Spring Security provides access control on request level as well as on method level. We can enable method level security in any configuration using @EnableMethodSecurity annotation as shown below:

@Controller 
@EnableMethodSecurity  // Enable method level security
public class AuthController { 
...
}

By default method level security is off. Spring Security provides following options for method level security.

  • @PreAuthorize − Prevent method invocation if provided condition is false. We can pass an expression to control the access as shown below:

    // Accessible to user with Admin role
@PreAuthorize("hasRole('ROLE_ADMIN')")  
public String update() {    
   return "Details Updated.";    
}

  • @PostAuthorize − Method can return value if provided condition is true. We can pass an expression to control the access as shown below:

    class Account {
   string owner;
   ...
}
...
@PostAuthorize("returnObject.owner == authentication.name")
public Account readAccount(Long id) {
    ...
    return account;	
	
}

    If user is account owner then account details will be returned otherwise AccessDeniedException will be thrown with 403 status code.

  • @PreFilter − Method filters any value if provided condition is true. We can pass an expression to filter the returned values as shown below:

    class Account {
   string owner;
   ...
}
...
@PreFilter("filterObject.owner == authentication.name")
public Colletion<Account> updateAccounts(Account... accounts) {
    ...
    return updatedAccounts;	
	
}

    Above method will filter those accounts which belongs to logged in user only based on provided condition and will update them only.

  • @PostFilter − Method filters any value if provided condition is true. We can pass an expression to filter the returned values as shown below:

    class Account {
   string owner;
   ...
}
...
@PostFilter("filterObject.owner == authentication.name")
public Colletion<Account> readAccounts(Long... ids) {
    ...
    return accounts;	
	
}

    Above method will filter those accounts which belongs to logged in user only based on provided condition.

Example

Let us start actual programming with Spring Security. Before you start writing your example using Spring framework, you have to make sure that you have set up your Spring environment properly as explained in Spring Security - Environment Setup Chapter. We also assume that you have a bit of working knowledge on Spring Tool Suite IDE.

Now let us proceed to write a Spring MVC based Application managed by Maven, which will ask user to login, authenticate user and then provide option to logout using Spring Security Form Login Feature.

Create Project using Spring Initializr

Spring Initializr is great way to start with Spring Boot project. It provides a easy to use User Interface to create a project, add dependencies, select java runtime etc. It generates a skeleton project structure which once downloaded can be imported in spring tool suite and we can proceed with our readymade project structure.

We're choosing a maven project, naming the project as formlogin, with java version as 21. Following dependencies are added:

  • Spring Web

  • Spring Security

  • Thymeleaf

  • Spring Boot DevTools

Spring Initializr

Thymeleaf is a templating engine for Java. It allows us to quickly develop static or dynamic web pages for rendering in the browser. It is extremely extensible and allows us to define and customize the processing of our templates in fine detail. In addition to this, we can learn more about Thymeleaf by clicking this link.

Let's move on to generate our project and download it. We then extract it to a folder of our choice and use any IDE to open it. I shall be using Spring Tools Suite 4. It is available for free downloading from the https://spring.io/tools website and is optimized for spring applications.

pom.xml with all relevant dependencies

Let's take a look at our pom.xml file. It should look something similar to this −

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
   <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
   <parent>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
      <version>3.3.1</version>
      <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
   </parent>
   <groupId>com.tutorialspoint.security</groupId>
   <artifactId>formlogin</artifactId>
   <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
   <name>formlogin</name>
   <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
   <url/>
   <licenses>
      <license/>
   </licenses>
   <developers>
      <developer/>
   </developers>
   <scm>
      <connection/>
      <developerConnection/>
      <tag/>
      <url/>
   </scm>
   <properties>
      <java.version>21</java.version>
   </properties>
   <dependencies>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
         <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
         <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
         <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.thymeleaf.extras</groupId>
         <artifactId>thymeleaf-extras-springsecurity6</artifactId>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
         <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
         <scope>runtime</scope>
         <optional>true</optional>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
         <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
         <scope>test</scope>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
         <artifactId>spring-security-test</artifactId>
         <scope>test</scope>
      </dependency>
   </dependencies>
   <build>
      <plugins>
         <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
         </plugin>
      </plugins>
   </build>
</project>

Spring Security Configuration Class

Inside of our config package, we have created the WebSecurityConfig class. We shall be using this class for our security configurations, so let's annotate it with an @Configuration annotation and @EnableWebSecurity. As a result, Spring Security knows to treat this class a configuration class. As we can see, configuring applications have been made very easy by Spring.

WebSecurityConfig

package com.tutorialspoint.security.formlogin.config; 

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.builders.HttpSecurity;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configuration.EnableWebSecurity;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configurers.AbstractHttpConfigurer;
import org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.User;
import org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.UserDetails;
import org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.UserDetailsService;
import org.springframework.security.crypto.bcrypt.BCryptPasswordEncoder;
import org.springframework.security.crypto.password.PasswordEncoder;
import org.springframework.security.provisioning.InMemoryUserDetailsManager;
import org.springframework.security.web.SecurityFilterChain;  

@Configuration 
@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig  { 

   @Bean 
   protected UserDetailsService userDetailsService() {
      UserDetails user = User.builder()
         .username("user")
         .password(passwordEncoder().encode("user123"))
         .roles("USER")
         .build();
      UserDetails admin = User.builder()
         .username("admin")
         .password(passwordEncoder().encode("admin123"))
         .roles("USER", "ADMIN")
         .build();
      return new InMemoryUserDetailsManager(user, admin);
   }

   @Bean 
   protected PasswordEncoder passwordEncoder() { 
      return new BCryptPasswordEncoder(); 
   }

   @Bean
   protected SecurityFilterChain filterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception { 
      return http
         .csrf(AbstractHttpConfigurer::disable)
         .authorizeHttpRequests(
            request -> request.requestMatchers("/login").permitAll()
            .requestMatchers("/**").authenticated()
         )
         .formLogin(form -> form.loginPage("/login")
            .defaultSuccessUrl("/")
            .failureUrl("/login?error=true")
            .permitAll())       
         .logout(config -> config  
            .logoutUrl("/logout") 
            .logoutSuccessUrl("/login")
         .build();
   }   
}

Controller Class

In this class, we've created a mapping for "/" endpoint and for "/login" for the index page and login page of this application. We've used @EnableMethodSecurity annotation to enable method level security as it is off by default.

AuthController.java

package com.tutorialspoint.security.formlogin.controllers; 

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller; 
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping; 

@Controller 
@EnableMethodSecurity
public class AuthController { 
   @GetMapping("/") 
   public String home() { 
      return "index"; 
   }
   @GetMapping("/login") 
   public String login() { 
      return "login"; 
   }
   
   // User with Admin role only can access this method
   @GetMapping("/update") 
   @ResponseBody  
   @PreAuthorize("hasRole('ROLE_ADMIN')")  
   public String update() {    
      return "Details Updated.";    
   }     
}

Views

Let's create index.html in /src/main/resources/templates folder with following content to act as a home page and to display logged in user name.

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" 
   xmlns:th="https://www.thymeleaf.org" 
   xmlns:sec="https://www.thymeleaf.org/thymeleaf-extras-springsecurity3"> 
   <head> 
      <title>
         Hello World!
      </title> 
   </head>
   <body> 
      <h1 th:inline="text">Hello <span sec:authentication="name"></span>!</h1>
      <a href="/update" alt="update details">Update Details</a> 	  
      <form th:action="@{/logout}" method="post"> 
         <input type="submit" value="Sign Out"/> 
      </form>
   </body> 
<html>

login.html

Let's create the login.html in /src/main/resources/templates folder with following content to act as a login page. We're using default name username, password and remember-me for text fields. In case of other name, we need to set the same in spring security config class as well.

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"      
   xmlns:th="https://www.thymeleaf.org" 
   xmlns:sec="https://www.thymeleaf.org/thymeleaf-extras-springsecurity3"> 
   <head> 
      <title>Spring Security Example</title> 
   </head> 
   <body> 
      <div th:if="${param.error}"> 
         <p>Bad Credentials</p>
      </div> 
      <div th:if="${param.logout}">You have been logged out.</div> 
      <form th:action="@{/login}" method="post">
         <h1>Please sign in</h1>
         <table>
            <tr>
               <td><label for="username"><b>Username</b></label></td>
               <td><input type="text" placeholder="Enter Username" name="username" id="username" required></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
               <td><label for="password"><b>Password</b></label></td>
               <td><input type="password" placeholder="Enter Password" name="password" id="password" required></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
               <td><label for="remember-me"><b>Remember Me</b></label> </td>
               <td><input type="checkbox" name="remember-me" /></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
               <td> </td>
               <td><input type="submit"  value="Sign In" /></td>
            </tr>		
         </table>       
      </form> 
   </body>
</html>

In login form, we're using POST method to login while using input fields with name and id as username, password and remember-me checkbox. If checkbox is selected, a remember-me Cookie will be created when user logs in the application.

Running the Application

As we've all component ready, let's run the Application. Right Click on the project, select Run As and then Spring Boot App.

It will boot up the application and once application is started, we can run localhost:8080 to check the changes.

Output

Now open localhost:8080, you can see our login page. Use user credential to login

Login Page with User

Login Form for user

Home Page for User

With valid credentials for user, a user page will be displayed as shown below with an Update Details Link:

User Page with Update Link

Click on Update Details Link and it will show Invalid Credentials and this method is not available for user.

Invalid Credential

Login with Admin User

Now go back using browser back button. Click on sign-out button, which will load the login page again. Now login using admin credential.

Login Form for user

Home Page for Admin User

With valid credentials for admin, an admin page will be displayed as shown below with an Update Details Link:

Admin Page with Update Link

Click on Update Details Link and it will show a message Details Updated and this method is available for admin.

Details Updated
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