How control access and rights in JSF?

Question

I would like to control the access after the user log in my system.

For example:

administrator : can add, delete and give rights to employee
employee : fill forms only
...

So after knowing which right the user has, checking in database, I would like to restrict what this user can see and do. There's a simple way to do that ?

EDIT

@WebFilter("/integra/user/*")
public class LoginFilter implements Filter {

    @Override
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws ServletException, IOException {    
        HttpServletRequest req = (HttpServletRequest) request;
        Authorization authorization = (Authorization) req.getSession().getAttribute("authorization");

        if (authorization != null && authorization.isLoggedIn()) {
            // User is logged in, so just continue request.
            chain.doFilter(request, response);
        } else {
            // User is not logged in, so redirect to index.
            HttpServletResponse res = (HttpServletResponse) response;
            res.sendRedirect(req.getContextPath() + "/integra/login.xhtml");
        }
    }

    // You need to override init() and destroy() as well, but they can be kept empty.


    @Override
    public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {

    }

    @Override
    public void destroy() {
    }
}

Answer 1

Well, this is a pretty broad subject. As you're starting off with homebrewed authentication, I'll target the answer on homebrewed authorization.

---

Role checking in Java/JSF is at its own relatively simple if the model is sensibly designed. Assuming that a single user can have multiple roles (as is often the case in real world applications), you'd ultimately like to end up having something like:

public class User {      private List<Role> roles;      // ...      public boolean hasRole(Role role) {         return roles.contains(role);     }  } 

public enum Role {      EMPLOYEE, MANAGER, ADMIN;  } 

so that you can check it as follows in your JSF views:

<h:selectManyCheckbox value="#{user.roles}" disabled="#{not user.hasRole('ADMIN')}">     <f:selectItems value="#{Role}" /> </h:selectManyCheckbox> 

<h:commandButton value="Delete" rendered="#{user.hasRole('ADMIN')}" /> 

and in your filter:

String path = req.getRequestURI().substring(req.getContextPath().length());  if (path.startsWith("/integra/user/admin/") && !user.hasRole(Role.ADMIN)) {     res.sendError(HttpServletResponse.SC_UNAUTHORIZED); } 

---

The hardest part is translating this Java model to a sane DB model. There are several different ways depending on the concrete business requirements, each with its own (dis)advantages. Or perhaps you already have a DB model on which you have to base your Java model (thus, you need to design bottom-up)?

Anyway, assuming that you're using JPA 2.0 (your question history at least confirms this) and that you can design top-down, one of the easiest ways would be to map the roles property as an @ElementCollection against an user_roles table. As we're using a Role enum, a second role table isn't necessary. Again, that depends on the concrete functional and business requirements.

In generic SQL terms, the user_roles table can look like this:

CREATE TABLE user_roles (     user_id BIGINT REFERENCES user(id),     role VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL,     PRIMARY KEY(user_id, role) ) 

Which is then to be mapped as follows:

@ElementCollection(targetClass=Role.class, fetch=FetchType.EAGER) @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING) @CollectionTable(name="user_roles", joinColumns={@JoinColumn(name="user_id")}) @Column(name="role") private List<Role> roles; 

That's basically all you'd need to change in your User entity.

---

Next to homebrewed authentication (login/logout) and authorization (role checking), there is also Java EE provided container managed authentication with which you can login by j_security_check or HttpServletRequest#login(), filter HTTP requests by <security-constraint> in web.xml, check the logged-in user by #{request.remoteUser} and its roles by #{request.isUserInRole('ADMIN')}, etc.

Then there are several 3rd party frameworks such as PicketLink, Spring Security, Apache Shiro, etc. But this is all out of the question :)