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Quarkus Extension for Spring Security API

While users are encouraged to use Java standard annotations for security authorizations, Quarkus provides a compatibility layer for Spring Security in the form of the spring-security extension.

This guide explains how a Quarkus application can leverage the well-known Spring Security annotations to define authorizations on RESTful services using roles.

Prerequisites

To complete this guide, you need:

Roughly 15 minutes
An IDE
JDK 17+ installed with JAVA_HOME configured appropriately
Apache Maven 3.9.9
Optionally the Quarkus CLI if you want to use it
Optionally Mandrel or GraalVM installed and configured appropriately if you want to build a native executable (or Docker if you use a native container build)
Some familiarity with the Spring Web extension

Solution

We recommend that you follow the instructions in the next sections and create the application step by step. However, you can go right to the completed example.

Clone the Git repository: git clone https://github.com/quarkusio/quarkus-quickstarts.git, or download an archive.

The solution is located in the spring-security-quickstart directory.

Creating the Maven project

First, we need a new project. Create a new project with the following command:

CLI

quarkus create app org.acme.spring.security:spring-security-quickstart \
    --extension='spring-web,spring-security,quarkus-elytron-security-properties-file,rest-jackson'
cd spring-security-quickstart

To create a Gradle project, add the --gradle or --gradle-kotlin-dsl option.

For more information about how to install and use the Quarkus CLI, see the Quarkus CLI guide.

Maven

mvn io.quarkus.platform:quarkus-maven-plugin:3.16.4:create \
    -DprojectGroupId=org.acme.spring.security \
    -DprojectArtifactId=spring-security-quickstart \
    -Dextensions='spring-web,spring-security,quarkus-elytron-security-properties-file,rest-jackson'
cd spring-security-quickstart

To create a Gradle project, add the -DbuildTool=gradle or -DbuildTool=gradle-kotlin-dsl option.

For Windows users:

If using cmd, (don’t use backward slash \ and put everything on the same line)
If using Powershell, wrap -D parameters in double quotes e.g. "-DprojectArtifactId=spring-security-quickstart"

This command generates a project which imports the spring-web, spring-security and security-properties-file extensions.

If you already have your Quarkus project configured, you can add the spring-web, spring-security and security-properties-file extensions to your project by running the following command in your project base directory:

CLI

quarkus extension add spring-web,spring-security,quarkus-elytron-security-properties-file,rest-jackson

Maven

./mvnw quarkus:add-extension -Dextensions='spring-web,spring-security,quarkus-elytron-security-properties-file,rest-jackson'

Gradle

./gradlew addExtension --extensions='spring-web,spring-security,quarkus-elytron-security-properties-file,rest-jackson'

This will add the following to your build file:

pom.xml

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-spring-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-spring-security</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-elytron-security-properties-file</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-rest-jackson</artifactId>
</dependency>

build.gradle

implementation("io.quarkus:quarkus-spring-web")
implementation("io.quarkus:quarkus-spring-security")
implementation("io.quarkus:quarkus-elytron-security-properties-file")
implementation("io.quarkus:quarkus-rest-jackson")

For more information about security-properties-file, you can check out the guide of the quarkus-elytron-security-properties-file extension.

GreetingController

The Quarkus Maven plugin automatically generated a controller with the Spring Web annotations to define our REST endpoint (instead of the Jakarta REST ones used by default). First create a src/main/java/org/acme/spring/security/GreetingController.java, a controller with the Spring Web annotations to define our REST endpoint, as follows:

package org.acme.spring.security;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/greeting")
public class GreetingController {

    @GetMapping
    public String hello() {
        return "Hello Spring";
    }
}

GreetingControllerTest

Note that a test for the controller has been created as well:

package org.acme.spring.security;

import io.quarkus.test.junit.QuarkusTest;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import static io.restassured.RestAssured.given;
import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.is;

@QuarkusTest
class GreetingControllerTest {
    @Test
    void testHelloEndpoint() {
        given()
          .when().get("/greeting")
          .then()
             .statusCode(200)
             .body(is("Hello Spring"));
    }

}

Package and run the application

Run the application with:

CLI

quarkus dev

Maven

./mvnw quarkus:dev

Gradle

./gradlew --console=plain quarkusDev

Open your browser to http://localhost:8080/greeting.

The result should be: {"message": "hello"}.

Modify the controller to secure the `hello` method

In order to restrict access to the hello method to users with certain roles, the @Secured annotation will be utilized. The updated controller will be:

package org.acme.spring.security;

import org.springframework.security.access.annotation.Secured;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/greeting")
public class GreetingController {

    @Secured("admin")
    @GetMapping
    public String hello() {
        return "hello";
    }
}

The easiest way to set up users and roles for our example is to use the security-properties-file extension. This extension essentially allows users and roles to be defined in the main Quarkus configuration file - application.properties. For more information about this extension check the associated guide. An example configuration would be the following:

quarkus.security.users.embedded.enabled=true
quarkus.security.users.embedded.plain-text=true
quarkus.security.users.embedded.users.scott=jb0ss
quarkus.security.users.embedded.roles.scott=admin,user
quarkus.security.users.embedded.users.stuart=test
quarkus.security.users.embedded.roles.stuart=user

Note that the test also needs to be updated. It could look like:

GreetingControllerTest

package org.acme.spring.security;

import io.quarkus.test.junit.QuarkusTest;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import static io.restassured.RestAssured.given;
import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.is;

@QuarkusTest
public class GreetingControllerTest {

    @Test
    public void testHelloEndpointForbidden() {
        given().auth().preemptive().basic("stuart", "test")
                .when().get("/greeting")
                .then()
                .statusCode(403);
    }

    @Test
    public void testHelloEndpoint() {
        given().auth().preemptive().basic("scott", "jb0ss")
                .when().get("/greeting")
                .then()
                .statusCode(200)
                .body(is("hello"));
    }

}

Test the changes

Automatically

Press r, while in dev mode, or run the application with:

Maven

./mvnw test

Gradle

./gradlew test

All tests should succeed.

Manually

Access allowed

Open your browser again to http://localhost:8080/greeting and introduce scott and jb0ss in the dialog displayed.

The word hello should be displayed.

Access forbidden

Open your browser again to http://localhost:8080/greeting and let empty the dialog displayed.

The result should be:

Access to localhost was denied
You don't have authorization to view this page.
HTTP ERROR 403

Some browsers save credentials for basic authentication. If the dialog is not displayed, try to clear saved logins or use the Private mode

Supported Spring Security annotations

Quarkus currently only supports a subset of the functionality that Spring Security provides with more features being planned. More specifically, Quarkus supports the security related features of role-based authorization semantics (think of @Secured instead of @RolesAllowed).

Annotations

The table below summarizes the supported annotations:

Table 1. Supported Spring Security annotations
Name	Comments	Spring documentation
@Secured	See above	Authorizing Method Invocation with @Secured
@PreAuthorize	See next section for more details	Authorizing Method Invocation with @PreAuthorize

@PreAuthorize

Quarkus provides support for some of the most used features of Spring Security’s @PreAuthorize annotation. The expressions that are supported are the following:

hasRole

To test if the current user has a specific role, the hasRole expression can be used inside @PreAuthorize.

Some examples are: @PreAuthorize("hasRole('admin')"), @PreAuthorize("hasRole(@roles.USER)") where the roles is a bean that could be defined like so:

import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class Roles {

    public final String ADMIN = "admin";
    public final String USER = "user";
}

hasAnyRole

In the same fashion as hasRole, users can use hasAnyRole to check if the logged-in user has any of the specified roles.

Some examples are: @PreAuthorize("hasAnyRole('admin')"), @PreAuthorize("hasAnyRole(@roles.USER, 'view')")

permitAll

Adding @PreAuthorize("permitAll()") to a method will ensure that method is accessible by any user (including anonymous users). Adding it to a class will ensure that all public methods of the class that are not annotated with any other Spring Security annotation will be accessible.

denyAll

Adding @PreAuthorize("denyAll()") to a method will ensure that method is not accessible by any user. Adding it to a class will ensure that all public methods of the class that are not annotated with any other Spring Security annotation will not be accessible to any user.

isAnonymous

When annotating a bean method with @PreAuthorize("isAnonymous()") the method will only be accessible if the current user is anonymous - i.e. a non logged-in user.

isAuthenticated

When annotating a bean method with @PreAuthorize("isAuthenticated()") the method will only be accessible if the current user is a logged-in user. Essentially the method is only unavailable for anonymous users.

#paramName == authentication.principal.username

This syntax allows users to check if a parameter (or a field of the parameter) of the secured method is equal to the logged-in username.

Examples of this use case are:

public class Person {

    private final String name;

    public Person(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    // this syntax requires getters for field access
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
}

@Component
public class MyComponent {

    @PreAuthorize("#username == authentication.principal.username") (1)
    public void doSomething(String username, String other){

    }

    @PreAuthorize("#person.name == authentication.principal.username") (2)
    public void doSomethingElse(Person person){

    }
}

1	`doSomething` can be executed if the current logged-in user is the same as the `username` method parameter
2	`doSomethingElse` can be executed if the current logged-in user is the same as the `name` field of `person` method parameter

the use of authentication. is optional, so using principal.username has the same result.

#paramName != authentication.principal.username

This is similar to the previous expression with the difference being that the method parameter must be different from the logged-in username.

@beanName.method()

This syntax allows developers to specify that the execution of method of a specific bean will determine if the current user can access the secured method.

The syntax is best explained with an example. Let’s assume that a MyComponent bean has been created like so:

@Component
public class MyComponent {

    @PreAuthorize("@personChecker.check(#person, authentication.principal.username)")
    public void doSomething(Person person){

    }
}

The doSomething method has been annotated with @PreAuthorize using an expression that indicates that method check of a bean named personChecker needs to be invoked to determine whether the current user is authorized to invoke the doSomething method.

An example of the PersonChecker could be:

@Component
public class PersonChecker {

    public boolean check(Person person, String username) {
        return person.getName().equals(username);
    }
}

Note that for the check method the parameter types must match what is specified in @PreAuthorize and that the return type must be a boolean.

Combining expressions

The @PreAuthorize annotations allows for the combination of expressions using logical AND / OR. Currently, there is a limitation where only a single logical operation can be used (meaning mixing AND and OR isn’t allowed).

Some examples of allowed expressions are:

    @PreAuthorize("hasAnyRole('user', 'admin') AND #user == principal.username")
    public void allowedForUser(String user) {

    }

    @PreAuthorize("hasRole('user') OR hasRole('admin')")
    public void allowedForUserOrAdmin() {

    }

    @PreAuthorize("hasAnyRole('view1', 'view2') OR isAnonymous() OR hasRole('test')")
    public void allowedForAdminOrAnonymous() {

    }

Currently, expressions do not support parentheses for logical operators and are evaluated from left to right

Important Technical Note

Please note that the Spring support in Quarkus does not start a Spring Application Context nor are any Spring infrastructure classes run. Spring classes and annotations are only used for reading metadata and / or are used as user code method return types or parameter types. What that means for end users, is that adding arbitrary Spring libraries will not have any effect. Moreover, Spring infrastructure classes (like org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor for example) will not be executed.

Conversion Table

The following table shows how Spring Security annotations can be converted to Jakarta REST annotations.

Spring	Jakarta REST	Comments
@Secured("admin")	@RolesAllowed("admin")
@PreAuthorize	No direct replacement	Quarkus handles complex authorisation differently, see this guide for details

Spring

Jakarta REST

Comments

@Secured("admin")

@RolesAllowed("admin")

@PreAuthorize

No direct replacement

Quarkus handles complex authorisation differently, see this guide for details

More Spring guides

Quarkus has more Spring compatibility features. See the following guides for more details:

Prerequisites
Solution
Creating the Maven project
GreetingController
GreetingControllerTest
Package and run the application
Modify the controller to secure the hello method
GreetingControllerTest
Test the changes
- Automatically
- Manually
Supported Spring Security annotations
- Annotations
Important Technical Note
Conversion Table
More Spring guides

Quarkus Extension for Spring Security API

Prerequisites

Solution

Creating the Maven project

GreetingController

GreetingControllerTest

Package and run the application

Modify the controller to secure the `hello` method

GreetingControllerTest

Test the changes

Automatically

Manually

Supported Spring Security annotations

Annotations

@PreAuthorize

Combining expressions

Important Technical Note

Conversion Table

More Spring guides

Related content

On the same topics

Quarkus Extension for Spring Security API

Prerequisites

Solution

Creating the Maven project

GreetingController

GreetingControllerTest

Package and run the application

Modify the controller to secure the hello method

GreetingControllerTest

Test the changes

Automatically

Manually

Supported Spring Security annotations

Annotations

@PreAuthorize

Combining expressions

Important Technical Note

Conversion Table

More Spring guides

Related content

On the same topics

Modify the controller to secure the `hello` method