How can I disable spring form based login for RESTful endpoints?

Question

I have spring-security configured using basic and form based authentication as per auto-config='true'.

I would like the endpoints under /api/** to NOT use form based security. Other endpoints outside of /api/** should use form based login. I would like a 401 response sent to any call for these endpoints who did not provide credentials under /api/**.

UPDATE: Thanks to Luke Taylor's comment below I have come up with the following solution.

NOTE: This technique can only be applied as of spring-security 3.1.

First I single out /api/**. We never create a session though use one if available, this is handled by create-session="never" and the use of <session-management/>.

<http pattern="/api/**" create-session="never" use-expressions="true">
    <http-basic />
    <session-management />
    <intercept-url pattern="/api/**" access="hasRole('API_ACCESS')"/>
</http>

<http auto-config="true" use-expressions="true">
    <intercept-url pattern="/" access="permitAll"/>
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="isAuthenticated()"/>
</http>

Answer 1

With Spring Security 3.1, your best option is to split the restful and non-restful parts of your application into separate filter chains by using two separate <http> elements. The restful API chain can then be configured to be stateless and use basic authentication, while the default chain can use a normal form-login configuration.

You would then have something like:

<http pattern="/api/**" create-session="stateless">
    <intercept-url pattern="/api/**" access="ROLE_API_USER" />
    <http-basic />        
</http>

<!-- No pattern attribute, so defaults to matching any request -->
<http>
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_USER" />
    <form-login />        
</http>

The chain definitions must be ordered from most specific pattern to most general, so the default chain comes last.