spring-security/docs/manual/src/docbook/core-services.xml

<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" version="5.0" xml:id="core-services"
    xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
    <title>Core Services</title>
    <para> Now that we have a high-level overview of the Spring Security architecture and its core
        classes, let's take a closer look at one or two of the core interfaces and their
        implementations, in particular the <interfacename>AuthenticationManager</interfacename>,
            <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> and the
            <interfacename>AccessDecisionManager</interfacename>. These crop up regularly throughout
        the remainder of this document so it's important you know how they are configured and how
        they operate. </para>
    <section xml:id="authentication-manager">
        <title>The <interfacename>AuthenticationManager</interfacename>,
                <classname>ProviderManager</classname> and
                <classname>AuthenticationProvider</classname>s</title>
        <para>The <interfacename>AuthenticationManager</interfacename> is just an interface, so the
            implementation can be anything we choose, but how does it work in practice? What if we
            need to check multiple authentication databases or a combination of different
            authentication services such as a database and an LDAP server?</para>
        <para>The default implementation in Spring Security is called
                <classname>ProviderManager</classname> and rather than handling the authentication
            request itself, it delegates to a list of configured
                <classname>AuthenticationProvider</classname>s, each of which is queried in turn to
            see if it can perform the authentication. Each provider will either throw an exception
            or return a fully populated <interfacename>Authentication</interfacename> object.
            Remember our good friends, <interfacename>UserDetails</interfacename> and
                <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename>? If not, head back to the previous
            chapter and refresh your memory. The most common approach to verifying an authentication
            request is to load the corresponding <interfacename>UserDetails</interfacename> and
            check the loaded password against the one that has been entered by the user. This is the
            approach used by the <classname>DaoAuthenticationProvider</classname> (see below). The
            loaded <interfacename>UserDetails</interfacename> object - and particularly the
                <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal>s it contains - will be used when building the
            fully populated <interfacename>Authentication</interfacename> object which is returned
            from a successful authentication and stored in the
                <classname>SecurityContext</classname>. </para>
        <para> If you are using the namespace, an instance of
                <classname>ProviderMananger</classname> is created and maintained internally, and
            you add providers to it either by using the namespace authentication provider elements,
            or by adding the <literal>&lt;custom-authentication-provider&gt;</literal> element to a
            bean (see <link xlink:href="#ns-auth-manager">the namespace chapter</link>). In this
            case, you should not declare a <classname>ProviderManager</classname> bean in your
            application context. However, if you are not using the namespace then you would declare
            it like so: <programlisting language="xml"><![CDATA[
<bean id="authenticationManager"
     class="org.springframework.security.authentication.ProviderManager">
  <property name="providers">
    <list>
      <ref local="daoAuthenticationProvider"/>
      <ref local="anonymousAuthenticationProvider"/>
      <ref local="ldapAuthenticationProvider"/>
    </list>
  </property>
</bean>]]></programlisting></para>
        <para>In the above example we have three providers. They are tried in the order shown (which
            is implied by the use of a <literal>List</literal>), with each provider able to attempt
            authentication, or skip authentication by simply returning <literal>null</literal>. If
            all implementations return null, the <literal>ProviderManager</literal> will throw a
                <exceptionname>ProviderNotFoundException</exceptionname>. If you're interested in
            learning more about chaining providers, please refer to the
                <literal>ProviderManager</literal> JavaDocs.</para>
        <para> Authentication mechanisms such as a web form-login processing filter are injected
            with a reference to the <interfacename>ProviderManager</interfacename> and will call it
            to handle their authentication requests. The providers you require will sometimes be
            interchangeable with the authentication mechanisms, while at other times they will
            depend on a specific authentication mechanism. For example,
                <classname>DaoAuthenticationProvider</classname> and
                <classname>LdapAuthenticationProvider</classname> are compatible with any mechanism
            which submits a simple username/password authentication request and so will work with
            form-based logins or HTTP Basic authentication. On the other hand, some authentication
            mechanisms create an authentication request object which can only be interpreted by a
            single type of <classname>AuthenticationProvider</classname>. An example of this would
            be JA-SIG CAS, which uses the notion of a service ticket and so can therefore only be
            authenticated by a <classname>CasAuthenticationProvider</classname>. You needn't be too
            concerned about this, because if you forget to register a suitable provider, you'll
            simply receive a <literal>ProviderNotFoundException</literal> when an attempt to
            authenticate is made.</para>
        <section>
            <title><literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal></title>
            <para>The simplest <interfacename>AuthenticationProvider</interfacename> implemented by
                Spring Security is <literal>DaoAuthenticationProvider</literal>, which is is also
                one of the earliest supported by the framework. It leverages a
                    <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> (as a DAO) in order to lookup
                the username, password and <interfacename>GrantedAuthority</interfacename>s. It
                authenticates the user simply by comparing the password submitted in a
                    <classname>UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken</classname> against the one
                loaded by the <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename>. Configuring the
                provider is quite simple: <programlisting language="xml"><![CDATA[
<bean id="daoAuthenticationProvider"
    class="org.springframework.security.authentication.dao.DaoAuthenticationProvider">
  <property name="userDetailsService" ref="inMemoryDaoImpl"/>
  <property name="saltSource" ref bean="saltSource"/>
  <property name="passwordEncoder" ref="passwordEncoder"/>
</bean>]]></programlisting> The <interfacename>PasswordEncoder</interfacename> and
                    <interfacename>SaltSource</interfacename> are optional. A
                    <interfacename>PasswordEncoder</interfacename> provides encoding and decoding of
                passwords presented in the <interfacename>UserDetails</interfacename> object that is
                returned from the configured <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename>. A
                    <interfacename>SaltSource</interfacename> enables the passwords to be populated
                with a "salt", which enhances the security of the passwords in the authentication
                repository. These will be discussed in more detail in ???.
                <!-- TODO: Add sections on password encoding and user caching to advaced topics -->
            </para>
        </section>
    </section>
    <section>
        <title><interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> Implementations</title>
        <para>As mentioned in the earlier in this reference guide, most authentication providers
            take advantage of the <interfacename>UserDetails</interfacename> and
                <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> interfaces. Recall that the
            contract for <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> is a single
            method:</para>
        <para>
            <programlisting>
  UserDetails loadUserByUsername(String username) throws UsernameNotFoundException;
            </programlisting>
        </para>
        <para>The returned <interfacename>UserDetails</interfacename> is an interface that provides
            getters that guarantee non-null provision of authentication information such as the
            username, password, granted authorities and whether the user account is enabled or
            disabled. Most authentication providers will use a
                <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename>, even if the username and password
            are not actually used as part of the authentication decision. They may use the returned
                <interfacename>UserDetails</interfacename> object just for its
                <literal>GrantedAuthority</literal> information, because some other system (like
            LDAP or X.509 or CAS etc) has undertaken the responsibility of actually validating the
            credentials.</para>
        <para>Given <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> is so simple to implement, it
            should be easy for users to retrieve authentication information using a persistence
            strategy of their choice. Having said that, Spring Security does include a couple of
            useful base implementations, which we'll look at below.</para>
        <section xml:id="in-memory-service">
            <title>In-Memory Authentication</title>
            <para>Is easy to use create a custom <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename>
                implementation that extracts information from a persistence engine of choice, but
                many applications do not require such complexity. This is particularly true if
                you're building a prototype application or just starting integrating Spring
                Security, when you don't really want to spend time configuring databases or writing
                    <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> implementations. For this sort
                of situation, a simple option is to use the <literal>user-service</literal> element
                from the security <link xlink:href="#namespace-minimal">namespace</link>: <programlisting><![CDATA[
  <user-service id="userDetailsService">
    <user name="jimi" password="jimispassword" authorities="ROLE_USER, ROLE_ADMIN" />
    <user name="bob" password="bobspassword" authorities="ROLE_USER" />
  </user-service>
  ]]>
                    </programlisting> This also supports the use of an external properties
                file: <programlisting><![CDATA[
  <user-service id="userDetailsService" properties="users.properties"/>
  ]]></programlisting> The properties file should contain entries in the form
                <programlisting>username=password,grantedAuthority[,grantedAuthority][,enabled|disabled]</programlisting>
                For example
                <programlisting>
 jimi=jimispassword,ROLE_USER,ROLE_ADMIN,enabled
 bob=bobspassword,ROLE_USER,enabled</programlisting></para>
        </section>
        <section xml:id="jdbc-service">
            <title><literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal></title>
            <para>Spring Security also includes a <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename>
                that can obtain authentication information from a JDBC data source. Internally
                Spring JDBC is used, so it avoids the complexity of a fully-featured object
                relational mapper (ORM) just to store user details. If your application does use an
                ORM tool, you might prefer to write a custom
                    <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename> to reuse the mapping files
                you've probably already created. Returning to <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal>, an
                example configuration is shown below:</para>
            <para>
                <programlisting language="xml"><![CDATA[
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
  <property name="driverClassName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"/>
  <property name="url" value="jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost:9001"/>
  <property name="username" value="sa"/>
  <property name="password" value=""/>
</bean>

<bean id="userDetailsService" class="org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.jdbc.JdbcDaoImpl">
  <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean> ]]>       </programlisting>
            </para>
            <para>You can use different relational database management systems by modifying the
                    <literal>DriverManagerDataSource</literal> shown above. You can also use a
                global data source obtained from JNDI, as with any other Spring
                configuration.</para>
            <section>
                <title>Authority Groups</title>
                <para>By default, <classname>JdbcDaoImpl</classname> loads the authorities for a
                    single user with the assumption that the authorities are mapped directly to
                    users (see the <link xlink:href="#appendix-schema">database schema
                        appendix</link>). An alternative approach is to partition the authorities
                    into groups and assign groups to the user. Some people prefer this approach as a
                    means of administering user rights. See the <classname>JdbcDaoImpl</classname>
                    Javadoc for more information on how to enable the use of group authorities. The
                    group schema is also included in the appendix.</para>
            </section>
            <!--
                <para>If the default schema is unsuitable for your needs, <literal>JdbcDaoImpl</literal>
                provides properties that allow customisation of the SQL statements. Please refer to the
                JavaDocs for details, but note that the class is not intended for complex custom
                subclasses. If you have a complex schema or would like a custom
                <interfacename>UserDetails</interfacename> implementation returned, you'd be better off
                writing your own <interfacename>UserDetailsService</interfacename>. The base
                implementation provided with Spring Security is intended for typical situations, rather
                than catering for all possible requirements.</para>
            -->
        </section>
    </section>
</chapter>