Spring Expression Language and Spring Security 3: accessing bean reference in @PreAuthorize

Question

I'm trying to access a bean reference in a @PreAuthorize annotation as follows:

@PreAuthorize("@testBean.getTestValue()")
public String testSpEL() {
    ....
}

I have a test bean configured as follows:

@Component(value="testBean")
public class TestBean {
    public boolean getTestValue() {
        return true;
    }
}

When I try to access the testSpEL() method however, I'm confronted with the following exception:

Caused by: org.springframework.expression.spel.SpelEvaluationException: EL1057E:(pos 1): No bean resolver registered in the context to resolve access to bean 'testBean'
    at org.springframework.expression.spel.ast.BeanReference.getValueInternal(BeanReference.java:45)
    at org.springframework.expression.spel.ast.CompoundExpression.getValueInternal(CompoundExpression.java:52)
    at org.springframework.expression.spel.ast.SpelNodeImpl.getTypedValue(SpelNodeImpl.java:102)
    at org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpression.getValue(SpelExpression.java:97)
    at org.springframework.security.access.expression.ExpressionUtils.evaluateAsBoolean(ExpressionUtils.java:11)

I have thoroughly done my research but I can't find anywhere what I need to change in my configuration to get this to work. Any pointers?

Thanks!

Kind regards, Jonck

P.S. I'm using Spring 3.0.5. The following seems to indicate this type of functionality should work:

https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-7173

Answer 1

I have posted a similar question at SpringSource, it turns out that indeed the above feature is not yet supported in Spring Security 3.0.5. Luckily version 3.1.0.RC1 does support it, though with non-standard SpEL syntax:

@PreAuthorize("testBean.getTestValue()")
public String testSpEL() {
    ....
}

Here is the url of the thread at SpringSource forum: SpringSource forum thread

Hope this helps someone!