spring security - access-denied-handler

Question

I have some problems with Spring Security and getting an access-denied-handler to work.

Spring security is working but when I visit /admin without the required privileges (ROLE_ADMIN), Spring Security is just redirecting to the root page which is my login form page.

I want to be able to redirect the user to /accessdenied or /?accessdenied=true which should load the login page and display the following message: "Permission denied - please login"

spring-security.xml:

<beans:beans 
    xmlns:security="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
    xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" 
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
                    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
                    http://www.springframework.org/schema/security 
                    http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.1.xsd">


    <security:http>
        <security:intercept-url pattern='/home' access='ROLE_USER,ROLE_ADMIN' />
        <security:intercept-url pattern='/admin*' access='ROLE_ADMIN' />
        <security:form-login login-page='/' default-target-url='/home' authentication-failure-url='/?error=true' />
        <security:logout logout-success-url='/' />
        <security:access-denied-handler error-page="/accessdenied"/>
    </security:http>
    <security:authentication-manager>
        <security:authentication-provider>
            <security:user-service>
                <security:user name='a' password='a' authorities='ROLE_ADMIN,ROLE_USER' />
                <security:user name='u' password='u' authorities='ROLE_USER' />
            </security:user-service>
        </security:authentication-provider>
    </security:authentication-manager>
</beans:beans>

web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">

    <!-- The definition of the Root Spring Container shared by all Servlets and Filters -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>
        /WEB-INF/spring/root-context.xml 
        /WEB-INF/spring/spring-security.xml
        </param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- Creates the Spring Container shared by all Servlets and Filters -->
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <!-- Processes application requests -->
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>/WEB-INF/spring/appServlet/servlet-context.xml</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

  <!-- Spring Security -->  
  <filter>  
    <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>  
    <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>  
  </filter>  
  <filter-mapping>  
    <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>  
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>  
  </filter-mapping>  
  <welcome-file-list>  
    <welcome-file>login.jsp</welcome-file>  
  </welcome-file-list>  

</web-app>

LoginController.java import java.util.Locale;

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;

@Controller
public class LoginController {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(LoginController.class);

    /**
     * Simply selects the home view to render by returning its name.
     */
    @RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String home(Locale locale, Model model) 
    {
        logger.info("Welcome home! The client locale is {}.", locale);

        return "login";
    }

    @RequestMapping(value = "/accessdenied", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String accessDenied(Locale locale, Model model) 
    {
        logger.info("Welcome home! The client locale is {}.", locale);

        model.addAttribute("message", "Permission denied - please login");

        return "login";
    }
}

I have tried several guides including the following, and none of it worked:

http://www.mkyong.com/spring-security/customize-http-403-access-denied-page-in-spring-security/ access denied page using spring security not working How to redirect to access-denied-page with spring security

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Can you please check the logs and confirm in your case AuthenticationException is getting thrown or AccessDeniedException when you visit /admin page.

Also you visit admin page with a correct login not having admin privileges or you visit it without login at all ?

Editted:

1. Can you check by adding some log statement or debug that when you access /admin with a correct login (not having admin priv), is the method accessDenied() getting called ?
2. Also can you share your login jsp, you might not have displayed message param correctly
3. When user doesn't have required priv but is a valid user then accessDeniedHandler is called, you can see something like this in debug logs

access is denied (user is not anonymous); delegating to AccessDeniedHandler

AccessDeniedHndler will forward the request to errorPage (Its not a redirect)