Spring Security custom filter

Question

I would like to customize Spring security 3.0.5 and change login URL to be /login instead of /j_spring_security_check.

What I need to do, is to to allow login to "/" directory and to secure "/admin/report.html" page.

First of All I create my own filter using tutorial and Spring Security source code:

public class MyFilter extends AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter {
    private static final String DEFAULT_FILTER_PROCESSES_URL = "/login";
    private static final String POST = "POST";
    public static final String SPRING_SECURITY_FORM_USERNAME_KEY = "j_username";
    public static final String SPRING_SECURITY_FORM_PASSWORD_KEY = "j_password";
    public static final String SPRING_SECURITY_LAST_USERNAME_KEY = "SPRING_SECURITY_LAST_USERNAME";

    private String usernameParameter = SPRING_SECURITY_FORM_USERNAME_KEY;
    private String passwordParameter = SPRING_SECURITY_FORM_PASSWORD_KEY;

    protected MyFilter() {
        super(DEFAULT_FILTER_PROCESSES_URL);
    }

    @Override
    public Authentication attemptAuthentication(HttpServletRequest request,
                                                HttpServletResponse response) 
                          throws AuthenticationException, IOException, ServletException {
        String username = obtainUsername(request);
        String password = obtainPassword(request);

        if (username == null) {
            username = "";
        }

        if (password == null) {
            password = "";
        }

        username = username.trim();
        UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken authRequest = new UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(username, password);
        HttpSession session = request.getSession(false);
        if (session != null || getAllowSessionCreation()) {
            request.getSession().setAttribute(SPRING_SECURITY_LAST_USERNAME_KEY, TextEscapeUtils.escapeEntities(username));
        }
        setDetails(request, authRequest);

        return this.getAuthenticationManager().authenticate(authRequest);
    }

    protected void setDetails(HttpServletRequest request, UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken authRequest) {
        authRequest.setDetails(authenticationDetailsSource.buildDetails(request));
    }

    @Override
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest req, ServletResponse res,
                         FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
        final HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) req;
        final HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse) res;
        if (request.getMethod().equals(POST)) {
            // If the incoming request is a POST, then we send it up
            // to the AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.
            super.doFilter(request, response, chain);
        } else {
            // If it's a GET, we ignore this request and send it
            // to the next filter in the chain.  In this case, that
            // pretty much means the request will hit the /login
            // controller which will process the request to show the
            // login page.
            chain.doFilter(request, response);
        }
    }

    protected String obtainUsername(HttpServletRequest request) {
        return request.getParameter(usernameParameter);
    }

    protected String obtainPassword(HttpServletRequest request) {
        return request.getParameter(passwordParameter);
    }
}

after It I'm making the following changes in xml

 <security:http auto-config="true">
        <!--<session-management session-fixation-protection="none"/>-->
        <security:custom-filter ref="myFilter" before="FORM_LOGIN_FILTER"/>
        <security:intercept-url pattern="/admin/login.jsp*" filters="none"/>
        <security:intercept-url pattern="/admin/report.html" access="ROLE_ADMIN"/>
        <security:form-login login-page="/admin/login.jsp" login-processing-url="/login" always-use-default-target="true"/>
        <security:logout logout-url="/logout" logout-success-url="/login.jsp" invalidate-session="true"/>
    </security:http>   
<security:authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager">
  <security:authentication-provider>
    <security:password-encoder hash="md5" />
    <security:user-service>
    <!-- peter/opal -->
      <security:user name="peter" password="22b5c9accc6e1ba628cedc63a72d57f8" authorities="ROLE_ADMIN" />
     </security:user-service>
  </security:authentication-provider>
</security:authentication-manager>
<bean id="myFilter" class="com.vanilla.springMVC.controllers.MyFilter">
<property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager"/>
</bean>

and then I have JSP with my code.

<form action="../login" method="post">
    <label for="j_username">Username</label>
    <input type="text" name="j_username" id="j_username" />
    <br/>
    <label for="j_password">Password</label>
    <input type="password" name="j_password" id="j_password"/>
    <br/>
    <input type='checkbox' name='_spring_security_remember_me'/> Remember me on this computer.
    <br/>
    <input type="submit" value="Login"/>
</form>

when trying to navigate to /admin/report.html I'm redirected to login page. but after submitting credentials I'm getting:

HTTP Status 404 - /SpringMVC/login/

type Status report

message /SpringMVC/login/

description The requested resource (/SpringMVC/login/) is not available.

It looks like I have problem in configuration, but I can't figure it out what causing this. Can you help?

Answer 1

I'm about 12 months late on this one, but in order to customise the login URL of the Spring Security form login you don't need to create your own filter. One of the attributes of the form-login tag allows you to set a custom URL. In fact, you can also change the default j_username and j_password field names using attributes of the form-login tag. Here's an example:

<form-login login-page="/login" login-processing-url="/login.do" default-target-url="/" always-use-default-target="true" authentication-failure-url="/login?error=1" username-parameter="username" password-parameter="password"/>

Answer 2

I think that @Ischin is correct to wonder about the form action url. Try putting in the full path and see if that works. If it does, you can work from there to figure out what isn't matching up.

The only other thing I can think of to check is the filter mapping in you web.xml. Since you are hitting the login page you have this set up, but I would check that you're not only intercepting urls with specific extensions, etc.

Also, just as an fyi, if you want the request (once the login form authenticates the user) to go to the secured resource (/admin/report.html in this case) then you should remove the form:login always-use-default-target="true". Setting this flag to true will cause the request to always go to the default target url, which usually isn't what you want. From the spring security docs :

Maps to the defaultTargetUrl property of UsernamePasswordAuthenticationFilter. If not set, the default value is "/" (the application root). A user will be taken to this URL after logging in, provided they were not asked to login while attempting to access a secured resource, when they will be taken to the originally requested URL.