Handle spring security authentication exceptions with @ExceptionHandler

Question

Ok, I tried as suggested writing the json myself from the AuthenticationEntryPoint and it works.

Just for testing I changed the AutenticationEntryPoint by removing response.sendError

@Component("restAuthenticationEntryPoint")
public class RestAuthenticationEntryPoint implements AuthenticationEntryPoint{

    public void commence(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationException authenticationException) throws IOException, ServletException {
    
        response.setContentType("application/json");
        response.setStatus(HttpServletResponse.SC_UNAUTHORIZED);
        response.getOutputStream().println("{ \"error\": \"" + authenticationException.getMessage() + "\" }");

    }
}

In this way you can send custom json data along with the 401 unauthorized even if you are using Spring Security AuthenticationEntryPoint.

Obviously you would not build the json as I did for testing purposes but you would serialize some class instance.

In Spring Boot, you should add it to http.authenticationEntryPoint() part of SecurityConfiguration file.

This is a very interesting problem that Spring Security and Spring Web framework is not quite consistent in the way they handle the response. I believe it has to natively support error message handling with MessageConverter in a handy way.

I tried to find an elegant way to inject MessageConverter into Spring Security so that they could catch the exception and return them in a right format according to content negotiation. Still, my solution below is not elegant but at least make use of Spring code.

I assume you know how to include Jackson and JAXB library, otherwise there is no point to proceed. There are 3 Steps in total.

Step 1 - Create a standalone class, storing MessageConverters

This class plays no magic. It simply stores the message converters and a processor RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor. The magic is inside that processor which will do all the job including content negotiation and converting the response body accordingly.

public class MessageProcessor { // Any name you like
    // List of HttpMessageConverter
    private List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> messageConverters;
    // under org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation
    private RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor processor;

    /**
     * Below class name are copied from the framework.
     * (And yes, they are hard-coded, too)
     */
    private static final boolean jaxb2Present =
        ClassUtils.isPresent("javax.xml.bind.Binder", MessageProcessor.class.getClassLoader());

    private static final boolean jackson2Present =
        ClassUtils.isPresent("com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper", MessageProcessor.class.getClassLoader()) &&
        ClassUtils.isPresent("com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonGenerator", MessageProcessor.class.getClassLoader());

    private static final boolean gsonPresent =
        ClassUtils.isPresent("com.google.gson.Gson", MessageProcessor.class.getClassLoader());

    public MessageProcessor() {
        this.messageConverters = new ArrayList<HttpMessageConverter<?>>();

        this.messageConverters.add(new ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter());
        this.messageConverters.add(new StringHttpMessageConverter());
        this.messageConverters.add(new ResourceHttpMessageConverter());
        this.messageConverters.add(new SourceHttpMessageConverter<Source>());
        this.messageConverters.add(new AllEncompassingFormHttpMessageConverter());

        if (jaxb2Present) {
            this.messageConverters.add(new Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter());
        }
        if (jackson2Present) {
            this.messageConverters.add(new MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter());
        }
        else if (gsonPresent) {
            this.messageConverters.add(new GsonHttpMessageConverter());
        }

        processor = new RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor(this.messageConverters);
    }

    /**
     * This method will convert the response body to the desire format.
     */
    public void handle(Object returnValue, HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
        ServletWebRequest nativeRequest = new ServletWebRequest(request, response);
        processor.handleReturnValue(returnValue, null, new ModelAndViewContainer(), nativeRequest);
    }

    /**
     * @return list of message converters
     */
    public List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> getMessageConverters() {
        return messageConverters;
    }
}

Step 2 - Create AuthenticationEntryPoint

As in many tutorials, this class is essential to implement custom error handling.

public class CustomEntryPoint implements AuthenticationEntryPoint {
    // The class from Step 1
    private MessageProcessor processor;

    public CustomEntryPoint() {
        // It is up to you to decide when to instantiate
        processor = new MessageProcessor();
    }

    @Override
    public void commence(HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationException authException)
        throws IOException, ServletException {

        // This object is just like the model class, 
        // the processor will convert it to appropriate format in response body
        CustomExceptionObject returnValue = new CustomExceptionObject();
        try {
            processor.handle(returnValue, request, response);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            throw new ServletException();
        }
    }
}

Step 3 - Register the entry point

As mentioned, I do it with Java Config. I just show the relevant configuration here, there should be other configuration such as session stateless, etc.

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class SecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.exceptionHandling().authenticationEntryPoint(new CustomEntryPoint());
    }
}

Try with some authentication fail cases, remember the request header should include Accept : XXX and you should get the exception in JSON, XML or some other formats.

The best way I've found is to delegate the exception to the HandlerExceptionResolver

@Component("restAuthenticationEntryPoint")
public class RestAuthenticationEntryPoint implements AuthenticationEntryPoint {

    @Autowired
    private HandlerExceptionResolver resolver;

    @Override
    public void commence(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationException exception) throws IOException, ServletException {
        resolver.resolveException(request, response, null, exception);
    }
}

then you can use @ExceptionHandler to format the response the way you want.

We need to use HandlerExceptionResolver in that case.

@Component
public class RESTAuthenticationEntryPoint implements AuthenticationEntryPoint {

    @Autowired
    //@Qualifier("handlerExceptionResolver")
    private HandlerExceptionResolver resolver;

    @Override
    public void commence(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationException authException) throws IOException {
        resolver.resolveException(request, response, null, authException);
    }
}

Also, you need to add in the exception handler class to return your object.

@RestControllerAdvice
public class GlobalExceptionHandler extends ResponseEntityExceptionHandler {

    @ExceptionHandler(AuthenticationException.class)
    public GenericResponseBean handleAuthenticationException(AuthenticationException ex, HttpServletResponse response){
        GenericResponseBean genericResponseBean = GenericResponseBean.build(MessageKeys.UNAUTHORIZED);
        genericResponseBean.setError(true);
        response.setStatus(HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED.value());
        return genericResponseBean;
    }
}

may you get an error at the time of running a project because of multiple implementations of HandlerExceptionResolver, In that case you have to add @Qualifier("handlerExceptionResolver") on HandlerExceptionResolver

In case of Spring Boot and @EnableResourceServer, it is relatively easy and convenient to extend ResourceServerConfigurerAdapter instead of WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter in the Java configuration and register a custom AuthenticationEntryPoint by overriding configure(ResourceServerSecurityConfigurer resources) and using resources.authenticationEntryPoint(customAuthEntryPoint()) inside the method.

Something like this:

@Configuration
@EnableResourceServer
public class CommonSecurityConfig extends ResourceServerConfigurerAdapter {

    @Override
    public void configure(ResourceServerSecurityConfigurer resources) throws Exception {
        resources.authenticationEntryPoint(customAuthEntryPoint());
    }

    @Bean
    public AuthenticationEntryPoint customAuthEntryPoint(){
        return new AuthFailureHandler();
    }
}

There's also a nice OAuth2AuthenticationEntryPoint that can be extended (since it's not final) and partially re-used while implementing a custom AuthenticationEntryPoint. In particular, it adds "WWW-Authenticate" headers with error-related details.

Hope this will help someone.

Taking answers from @Nicola and @Victor Wing and adding a more standardized way:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.InitializingBean;
import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.http.converter.HttpMessageConverter;
import org.springframework.http.server.ServerHttpResponse;
import org.springframework.http.server.ServletServerHttpResponse;
import org.springframework.security.core.AuthenticationException;
import org.springframework.security.web.AuthenticationEntryPoint;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import java.io.IOException;

public class UnauthorizedErrorAuthenticationEntryPoint implements AuthenticationEntryPoint, InitializingBean {

    private HttpMessageConverter messageConverter;

    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    @Override
    public void commence(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationException exception) throws IOException, ServletException {

        MyGenericError error = new MyGenericError();
        error.setDescription(exception.getMessage());

        ServerHttpResponse outputMessage = new ServletServerHttpResponse(response);
        outputMessage.setStatusCode(HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED);

        messageConverter.write(error, null, outputMessage);
    }

    public void setMessageConverter(HttpMessageConverter messageConverter) {
        this.messageConverter = messageConverter;
    }

    @Override
    public void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception {

        if (messageConverter == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Property 'messageConverter' is required");
        }
    }

}

Now, you can inject configured Jackson, Jaxb or whatever you use to convert response bodies on your MVC annotation or XML based configuration with its serializers, deserializers and so on.