Grails spring-security-core plugin question: password in User class isn't String

Question

I'm working on an application which stores password as byte[] in the db. I can't change the db. So my domain class has the following:

String userId
byte[] userPasswd

I know i can customize the names of the properties in Config.groovy but what about using byte[] instead of String datatype for password property? In case this is not currently supported in the plugin, a work around would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

There are a few ways, but this seems the cleanest and requires no Config.groovy changes.

Change the persistent password property to another name like you did (userPasswd) but put in a getter for getPassword() that the plugin will use, and convert the byte array to a String there:

class User {

   String username
   byte[] userPasswd
   boolean enabled
   boolean accountExpired
   boolean accountLocked
   boolean passwordExpired

   static constraints = {
      username blank: false, unique: true
      password blank: false
   }

   static transients = ['password']

   String getPassword() {
      userPasswd ? new String(userPasswd) : null
   }

   Set<Role> getAuthorities() {
      UserRole.findAllByUser(this).collect { it.role } as Set
   }
}

Adding 'password' to the transients list is important since the real persistent field is userPasswd.

This will affect how you create users, eg

def user = new User(username: 'me', enabled: true,
   passwd: springSecurityService.encodePassword('password').bytes).save()