Securing Java applications with Acegi, Part 1: Architectural overview and security filters

URL-based security with Acegi Security System 27 Mar 2007 This three-part series introduces Acegi Security System, a formidable open source security framework for Java enterprise applications. In this first article, consultant Bilal Siddiqui introduces you to the architecture and components of Acegi and shows you how to use it to secure a simple Java enterprise application. Acegi Security System is a formidable, easy-to-use alternative to writing endless security code for your Java enterprise applications. While intended especially for applications written using the Spring framework, there is no reason why Acegi cannot be used for any type of Java application. This three-part series introduces you to Acegi from the ground up and shows you how to use it to secure both simple enterprise applications and ones that are more complex. This series starts with an introduction to the common security concerns of enterprise applications and explains how Acegi resolves them. You will see Acegi's architectural model and its security filters, which embody most of the functionality you'll use to secure your applications. You will learn how filters work individually, how they can be combined, and how a filter chain functions from start to finish in an enterprise security implementation. This article concludes with a sample application that demonstrates Acegi's implementation of a URL-based security system. The following two articles in the series will explore some of the more advanced uses of Acegi, including how to design and host access control policies and then configure Acegi to use them.

Enterprise application security

Because enterprise content management (ECM) applications manage the authoring and processing of enterprise content stored in different types of data sources (such as file systems, relational databases, and directory services), ECM security requires controlling access to those data sources. For example, an ECM application might control who is authorized to read, edit, or delete data related to the design, marketing, production, and quality control of a manufacturing enterprise. In an ECM security scenario, it is common to implement access control by applying security on the locators (or network addresses) of enterprise resources. This simple security model is called Universal Resource Locator, or URL security. As I demonstrate later in this article (and in the series), Acegi offers comprehensive features for implementing URL security. In many enterprise scenarios, however, URL security is not enough. For example, consider a PDF document containing the data about a particular product manufactured

by the manufacturing company. Part of the document contains design data meant to be edited and updated by the company's design department. Another part of the document contains production data, which production managers will use. For a scenario like this one, you would need to implement more fine-grained security applying different access rights to different portions of the document. This article introduces you to Acegi's facilities for implementing URL security. The next article in the series will demonstrate the framework's method-based security, which gives you more fine-grained control over enterprise data access.

Acegi Security System

Acegi Security System uses security filters to provide authentication and authorization services to enterprise applications. The framework offers several types of filters that you can configure according to your application requirements. You will learn about the various types of security filters later in the article; for the moment, just note that you can configure Acegi's security filters for the following tasks: 1. Prompt the user for login before accessing a secure resource. 2. Authenticate the user by checking a security token such as a password. 3. Check whether an authenticated user has the privilege to access a secure resource. 4. Redirect a successfully authenticated and authorized user to the secure resource requested. 5. Display an Access Denied page to a user who does not have the privilege to access a secure resource. 6. Remember a successfully authenticated user on the server and set a secure cookie on the user's client. The next authentication can then be performed using the cookie and without asking the user to log in. 7. Store authentication information in server-side session objects to securely serve subsequent requests for resources. 8. Build and maintain a cache of security information in server-side objects to optimize performance. 9. When the user signs out, destroy server-side objects maintained for the user's secure session. 10. Communicate with a variety of back-end data storage services (like a directory service or a relational database) that are used to store users' security information and the ECM's access-control policies. As this list suggests, Acegi's security filters allow you to do almost anything you might require to secure your enterprise applications

Architecture and components

The more you understand Acegi, the easier it will be for you to work with it. This section introduces Acegi's components; next you will learn how the framework uses inversion of control (IOC) and XML configuration files to combine components and express their dependencies. The big four Acegi Security System consists of four main types of component: filters, managers, providers, and handlers. Filters These most high-level components provide common security services like authentication processing, session handling, and logout. I discuss filters in depth later in the article. Managers Filters are only a high-level abstraction of security-related functionality: managers and providers are used to actually implement authentication processing and logout services. Managers manage lower level security services offered by different providers. Providers A variety of providers are available to communicate with different types of data storage services, such as directory services, relational databases, or simple inmemory objects. This means you can store your user base and access control policies in any of these data storage services and Acegi's managers will select appropriate providers at run time. Handlers Tasks are sometimes broken up into multiple steps, with each step performed by a specific handler. For example, Acegi's logout filter uses two handlers to sign out an HTTP client. One handler invalidates a user's HTTP session and another handler destroys the user's cookie. Having multiple handlers provides flexibility while configuring Acegi to work according to your application requirements. You can select the handlers of your choice to execute the steps required to secure your application. Inversion of control Acegi's components are dependent on each other to secure your enterprise applications. For example, an authentication processing filter requires an authentication manager to select an appropriate authentication provider. This means you must be able to express and manage the dependency of Acegi's components. An IOC implementation is commonly used to manage the dependencies of Java components. IOC offers two important features: 1. It provides a syntax to express what components are required in an application and how they depend on each other. 2. It ensures that required components are available at run time.

The XML configuration file Acegi uses the popular open source IOC implementation that comes with the Spring framework (see Resources) to manage its components. Spring uses an XML configuration file to express the dependency of components, as shown in Listing 1: Listing 1. Structure of a Spring configuration file <beans>

<bean id="filterChainProxy" class="org.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy"> <property name="filterInvocationDefinitionSource"> <value> value here </value> </property> </bean> <bean id="authenticationProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFitler"> <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authManager"/> <!-- Other properties --> </bean> <bean id="authManager" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager"> <property name="providers"> <!-- List of providers here --> </property> </bean> <!-- Other bean tags --> </beans>

As you can see, the Spring XML configuration file used by Acegi contains a single <beans> tag that wraps a number of other <bean> tags. All Acegi components (that is, filters, managers, providers, etc.) are actually JavaBeans. Each <bean> tag in the XML configuration file represents an Acegi component. Further notes about the XML configuration file The first thing you'll note is that each <bean> tag has a class attribute, which identifies the class that the component uses. The <bean> tag also has an id attribute that identifies the instance (Java object) acting as an Acegi component. For instance, the first <bean> tag of Listing 1 identifies a component instance named filterChainProxy, which is an instance of a class named org.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy. The dependency of a bean is expressed using child tags of the <bean> tag. For example, notice the <property> child tag of the first <bean> tag. The <property> child tag defines values or other beans on which the <bean> tag depends. So in Listing 1, the <property> child tag of the first <bean> tag has a name attribute and a <value> child tag, which respectively define the name and value of the property on which the bean depends.

Likewise, the second and third <bean> tags of Listing 1 define that a filter bean depends on a manager bean. The second <bean> tag represents the filter bean and the third <bean> tag represents the manager bean. The <bean> tag for the filter contains a <property> child tag with two attributes, name and ref. The name attribute defines a property of the filter bean and the ref attribute refers to the instance (name) of the manager bean. The next section shows you how to configure Acegi filters in an XML configuration file. Later in the article, you will use the filters in a sample Acegi application

Security filters
As I previously mentioned, Acegi uses security filters to provide authentication and authorization services to enterprise applications. You can use and configure various types of filters according to your application requirements. This section introduces the five most important Acegi security filters. Session Integration Filter Acegi's Session Integration Filter (SIF) is normally the first filter you will configure. SIF creates a security context object, which is a placeholder for security-related information. Other Acegi filters save security information in the security context and also use the information available in the security context. SIF creates the security context and calls other filters in the filter chain. Other filters then retrieve the security context and make changes to it. For example, the Authentication Processing Filter (which I discuss next) stores user information such as username, password, and e-mail address in the security context. When all the filters have finished processing, SIF checks the security context for updates. If any filter has made changes to the security context, SIF saves the changes into a server-side session object. If no changes are found in the security context, SIF discards it. SIF is configured in the XML configuration file as shown in Listing 2: Listing 2. Configuring SIF
<bean id="httpSessionContextIntegrationFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.context.HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilte r"/>

Authentication Processing Filter Acegi uses the Authentication Processing Filter (APF) for authentication. APF uses an authentication (or login) form, in which a user enters a username and password and triggers authentication.

APF performs all back-end authentication processing tasks such as extracting the username and password from the client request, reading the user's parameters from the back-end user base, and using the information to authenticate the user. When you configure APF, you must provide the following parameters:

Authentication manager specifies the authentication manager to be used to manage authentication providers. Filter processes URL specifies the URL to be accessed when the client presses the Sign In button on the login form. Upon receiving a request for this URL, Acegi invokes APF. Default target URL specifies the page to be presented to the user if authentication and authorization is successful. Authentication failure URL specifies the page the user sees if authentication fails.

APF fetches the username, password, and other information from the user's request object. It passes this information to the authentication manager. The authentication manager uses an appropriate provider to read detailed user information (such as username, password, e-mail address, and the user's access rights or privileges) from the back-end user base, authenticates the user, and stores the information in an Authentication object. Finally, APF saves the Authentication object in the security context created earlier by SIF. The Authentication object stored in the security context will be used later to make authorization decisions. Configure APF as shown in Listing 3: Listing 3. Configuring APF
<bean id="authenticationProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFilter" > <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager" /> <property name="filterProcessesUrl" value="/j_acegi_security_check" /> <property name="defaultTargetUrl" value="/protected/protected1.jsp" /> <property name="authenticationFailureUrl" value="/login.jsp?login_error=1" /> </bean>

You can see from this code that APF depends on the four parameters discussed above. Each parameter is configured as a <property> tag in Listing 3. Logout Processing Filter

Acegi uses a Logout Processing Filer (LPF) to manage logout processing. LPF operates when a logout request comes from a client. It identifies the logout request from the URL invoked by the client. LPF is configured as shown in Listing 4: Listing 4. Configuring LPF
<bean id="logoutFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.logout.LogoutFilter"> <constructor-arg value="/logoutSuccess.jsp"/> <constructor-arg> <list> <bean class="org.acegisecurity.ui.logout.SecurityContextLogoutHandler"/> </list> </constructor-arg> </bean>

You can see that LPF takes two parameters in its constructor: the logout success URL (/logoutSuccess.jsp) and a list of handlers. The logout success URL is used to redirect the client after the logout process is complete. Handlers perform the actual logout process; I have configured only one handler because it is enough to invalidate the HTTP session. I will discuss more handlers in the second article of this series. Exception Translation Filter The Exception Translation Filter (ETF) handles exceptional cases in the authentication and authorization procedure, such as when authorization fails. In these exceptional cases, ETF decides what to do. For example, if a non-authenticated user attempts to access a protected resource, ETF serves the login page inviting the user to authenticate. Similarly, in case of authorization failure, you can configure ETF to serve an Access Denied page. ETF is configured as shown in Listing 5:

Listing 5. Configuring ETF

<bean id="exceptionTranslationFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.ExceptionTranslationFilter"> <property name="authenticationEntryPoint"> <bean class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessin gFilterEntryPoint"> <property name="loginFormUrl" value="/login.jsp" /> </bean> </property> <property name="accessDeniedHandler"> <bean class="org.acegisecurity.ui.AccessDeniedHandlerImpl"> <property name="errorPage" value="/accessDenied.jsp" /> </bean> </property> </bean>

As

you

can

see

from

Listing

5,

ETF

takes

two

parameters

authenticationEntryPoint and accessDeniedHandler. authenticationEntryPoint property specifies the login page accessDeniedHandler specifies the Access Denied page.

named The and the

Interceptor filters Acegi's interceptor filters are used to make authorization decisions. You need to configure interceptor filters to act after APF has performed a successful authentication. Interceptors use your application's access control policy to make authorization decisions. The next article in this series shows you how to design access control policies, how to host them on a directory service, and how to configure Acegi to read your access control policy. For the moment, however, I'll stick to showing you how to configure a simple access control policy using Acegi. Later in the article, you'll see the simple access control policy used in building a sample application. You can divide configuring a simple access control policy into two steps: 1. Writing the access control policy. 2. Configuring Acegi's interceptor filter according to the policy. Step 1. Writing a simple access control policy Start by looking at Listing 6, which shows how to define a user and the user's role:

Listing 6. Defining simple access control policy for a user

alice=123,ROLE_HEAD_OF_ENGINEERING

The access control policy shown in Listing 6 defines a user named alice, whose password is 123 and whose role is ROLE_HEAD_OF_ENGINEERING. (The next section explains how you can define any number of users and their roles in a file and then configure an Acegi Interceptor filter to use the file.) Step 2. Configuring Acegi's interceptor filter Interceptor filters use three components to make authorization decisions, which I have configured in Listing 7: Listing 7. Configuring an interceptor filter
<bean id="filterInvocationInterceptor" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.FilterSecurityInterceptor"> <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager" /> <property name="accessDecisionManager" ref="accessDecisionManager" /> <property name="objectDefinitionSource"> <value> CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT /protected/**=ROLE_HEAD_OF_ENGINEERING /**=IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY </value> </property> <!-- More properties of the interceptor filter --> </bean>

As Listing 7 shows, the three components you need to configure are the authenticationManager, accessDecisionManager, objectDefinitionSource:

The authenticationManager component is the same as the authentication manager discussed when I introduced the Authentication Processing Filter. The interceptor filter can use the authenticationManager to re-authenticate a client during the authorization process. The accessDecisionManager component manages the process of authorization, which the next article of this series will discuss in more detail. The objectDefinitionSource component contains access control definitions according to which authorization will take place. For example, the objectDefinitionSource property in Listing 7 contains two URLs (/protected/* and /*) in its value. The value defines roles for these URLs. The role for the /protected/* URL is ROLE_HEAD_OF_ENGINEERING. You can define any roles you like, according to your application requirements. Recall from Listing 6 that you defined ROLE_HEAD_OF_ENGINEERING for the user named alice. This means alice will be able to access the /protected/* URL.

How filters work

As you have learned already, Acegi's components are dependent on each other to secure your applications. Later in the series, you will see how to configure Acegi to apply security filters in a specific order, thus creating a chain of filters. For this purpose, Acegi maintains a filter chain object, which wraps all the filters you have configured to secure your application. Figure 1 shows the life cycle of the Acegi filter chain, which starts when a client sends an HTTP request to your application. (Figure 1 shows a container serving a browser client.) Figure 1. A container hosting Acegi's filter chain to securely serve a browser client

The following steps describe the life cycle of the filter chain: 1. A browser client sends an HTTP request to your application. 2. The container receives the HTTP request and creates a request object that wraps information contained in the HTTP request. The container also creates a response object, which different filters can process to prepare an HTTP response for the requesting client. The container then invokes Acegi's filter chain proxy, which is a proxy filter. The proxy knows the sequences of actual filters to be applied. When the container invokes the proxy, it passes request, response, and filter chain objects to it. 3. The proxy filter invokes the first filter in the filter chain, passing request, response, and filter chain objects to the filter. 4. Filters in the chain do their processing one by one. A filter can terminate its processing at any time by calling the next filter in the chain. A filter may even choose to not perform any processing at all (for example, APF might terminate its processing upon discovering that an incoming request did not require authentication). 5. When authentication filters have finished processing, they pass request and response objects to the interceptor filter configured in your application. 6. The interceptor decides whether the requesting client is authorized to access the requested resource. 7. The interceptor transfers control to your application (for example, the JSP page requested by the client in case of successful authentication and authorization).

8. Your application writes contents over the response object. 9. The response object is now ready. The container translates the response object into an HTTP response and sends the response to the requesting client. To help you further understand Acegi filters, I'll give you a closer look at the operation of two of them: the Session Integration Filter and the Authentication Processing Filter. How SIF creates a security context Figure 2 shows the steps involved in SIF's creation of a security context: Figure 2. SIF creates a security context

Now consider these steps in detail: 1. Acegi's filter chain proxy invokes SIF and passes request, response, and filter chain objects to it. Note that normally you will configure SIF as the first filter in the filter chain. 2. SIF checks whether it has already processed this Web request or not. If it finds that it has, it does no further processing and transfers control to the next filter in the filter chain (see Step 4 below). If SIF finds that this is the first time it has been called during the given Web request, it sets a flag, which will be used next time to indicate that SIF has been called. 3. SIF checks whether a session object exists and contains a security context. It retrieves the security context from the session object and places it in a temporary placeholder called security context holder. If the session object does not exist, SIF creates a new security context and puts it in the security context holder. Note that the security context holder exists in the application scope so that it is accessible to other security filters. 4. SIF calls the next filter in the filter chain. 5. Other filters may edit the security context.

6. SIF receives control after the filter chain processing completes. 7. SIF checks whether any other filter changed the security context during its processing (for example, APF may have stored user details in the security context). If so, it updates the security context in the session object. This means that any changes made to the security context during filter chain processing now reside in the session object. How APF authenticates a user Figure 3 shows the steps involved in APF's authentication of a user: Figure 3. APF authenticates a user

Now consider these steps in detail: 1. The previous filter in the filter chain passes request, response, and filter chain objects to APF. 2. APF creates an authentication token with the username, password, and other information fetched from the request object. 3. APF passes the authentication token to the authentication manager. 4. The authentication manager may contain one or more authentication providers. Each provider supports exactly one type of authentication. The manager checks which of its providers support the authentication token it received from APF. 5. The authentication manager passes the authentication token to the provider suitable for authentication.

6. The authentication provider extracts the username from the authentication token and passes it to a service called user cache service. Acegi maintains a cache of users who have been authenticated. The next time the user signs in, Acegi can load his or her details (such as username, password, and privileges) from the cache instead of reading from back-end data storage. This improves performance. 7. The user cache service checks whether details of the user exist in the cache. 8. The user cache service returns the details of the user to the authentication provider. If the cache does not contain user details, it returns null. 9. The authentication provider checks whether the cache service returned details of the user or null. 10. If the cache returned null, the authentication provider passes the username (extracted in Step 6) to another service called user details service. 11. The user details service communicates with the back-end data storage (such as a directory service) that contains details of the user. 12. The user details service returns details of the user or throws an authentication exception if it cannot find details of the user. 13. If either the user cache service or the user details service returns valid user details, the authentication provider matches the security token (such as a password) supplied by the user with the password returned by the cache or user details service. If a match is found, the authentication provider returns the details of the user to the authentication manager. Otherwise, it throws an authentication exception. 14. The authentication manager returns details of the user back to APF. The user is now successfully authenticated. 15. APF saves the user details in the security context created in Step 3 of Figure 2. 16. APF transfers control to the next filter in the filter chain.

A simple Acegi application

You have learned quite a bit about Acegi in this article, so I'll conclude with a look at what you can do with what you've learned so far. For this simple demonstration, I designed a sample application (see Download) and configured Acegi to secure some of its resources. The sample application contains five JSP pages: index.jsp, protected1.jsp, protected2.jsp, login.jsp, and accessDenied.jsp. index.jsp is the welcome page of the application. It presents three hyperlinks to the user, as shown in Figure 4: Figure 4. Welcome page of the sample application

Two of the links shown in Figure 4 point to protected resources (protected1.jsp and protected2.jsp) and the third link points to a login page (login.jsp). The accessDenied.jsp page is presented only if Acegi finds that the user is not authorized to access a protected resource. If the user attempts to access any of the protected resources, the sample application presents the login page. When the user signs in using the login page, the application automatically redirects to the requested protected resource. The user can directly request the login page by clicking a third link (Login) on the welcome page. In this case, the application presents the login page where the user can sign in. After signing in, the application redirects the user to protected1.jsp, which is the default resource presented whenever a user signs in without requesting a particular protected resource.

Configuring the sample application The source code download for this article contains an XML configuration file named acegi-config.xml, which contains the configuration of Acegi's filters. The configuration should be familiar to you based on the examples in the discussion of security filters. I have also written a web.xml file for the sample application, as shown in Listing 8: Listing 8. The web.xml file for the sample application The web.xml file configures the following:
<web-app> <context-param> <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> <param-value>/WEB-INF/acegi-config.xml</param-value> </context-param> <filter> <filter-name>Acegi Filter Chain Proxy</filter-name> <filter-class> org.acegisecurity.util.FilterToBeanProxy </filter-class> <init-param> <param-name>targetClass</param-name> <param-value> org.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy </param-value> </init-param> </filter> <filter-mapping> <filter-name>Acegi Filter Chain Proxy</filter-name> <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern> </filter-mapping> <listener> <listener-class> org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener </listener-class> </listener> </web-app>

The URL of the acegi-config.xml file in a <context-param> tag. The name of Acegi's filter chain proxy class in a <filter> tag. The mapping of URLs to Acegi's filter chain proxy in a <filter-mapping> tag. Note that you can simply map all URLs of your application (/*) to Acegi's filter chain proxy. Acegi applies security to all URLs you map to Acegi's filter chain proxy. An application context loader in a <listener> tag, which loads Spring's IOC framework

Deploy and run the application Deploying and running the sample application is very simple. You just need to do two things: 1. Copy the acegisample.war file from the source code download of this tutorial into the webapps directory of your Tomcat installation. 2. Download and unzip acegi-security-1.0.3.zip from the Acegi Security System home page. You will find a sample application named acegi-security-sampletutorial.war. Unzip the war file to extract all the jars you find in its WEB-INF/lib folder. Copy all the JARs from the WEB-INF/lib folder into the WEB-INF/lib folder of theacegisample.war application. Now you are ready to try the sample application. Start Tomcat and point your browser to http://localhost:8080/acegisample/. You will see the welcome page shown in Figure 4, but this time it will be live. Go ahead and see what happens when you try to access different links presented on the welcome page.

In conclusion
In this first article in the Securing Java applications with Acegi series, you have learned about the features, architecture, and components of Acegi Security System. You've learned quite a bit about Acegi's security filters, which are integral to its security framework. You've also learned how to configure component dependencies using an XML configuration file, and seen Acegi's security filters at work in a sample application that implements URL-based security. The security technique described in this article is fairly simple, and so are the Acegi facilities used to implement it. The next article in this series will get you started with some more advanced uses of Acegi, beginning with writing an access control policy and storing it in a directory service. You will also learn how to configure Acegi to interact with the directory service to implement your access control policy.

Securing Java applications with Acegi, Part 2: Working with an LDAP directory server
Access control with ApacheDS and Acegi With the basics out of the way, you're ready to discover the more advanced uses of Acegi Security System. In this article, Bilal Siddiqui shows you how to combine Acegi with an LDAP directory server for flexible, high performance Java application security. Learn how to write an access control policy and store it in ApacheDS, and then configure Acegi to interact with the directory server for authentication and authorization purposes. This three-part series of articles is an introduction to using Acegi Security System to secure your Java enterprise applications. In the first article in this series, I introduced Acegi and explained how to use security filters to implement a simple, URL-based security system. In this second article, I begin to discuss the more advanced uses of Acegi, starting with writing an access control policy and storing it in ApacheDS, an open source LDAP directory server. I also show you how to configure Acegi to interact with the directory server to implement your access control policy. At the conclusion of the article, I present an example application that uses ApacheDS and Acegi to implement a secure access control policy. Implementing an access control policy usually consists of two steps: 1. Storing data about users and their roles in a directory server. 2. Writing the security code that defines who can access and use the data. Acegi relieves you from writing code, so in this article, I show you how to first store user and role information in ApacheDS and then implement an access control policy for that information. In the final article in this series, I will show you how to configure Acegi to secure access to your Java classes. You can download the sample application at any point in the discussion. See Resources to download Acegi, Tomcat, and ApacheDS, which you need to run the sample code and the example application.

LDAP basics
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is probably the most popular protocol defining data formats for common directory operations such as reading, editing, searching, and deleting information stored in a directory server. This section briefly explains why a directory server is preferable to a properties file for storing security information and shows you how to structure and host your user information in an LDAP directory.

Why use a directory server? In the first part of this series, you learned a simple way to store your user information in the form of a properties file (see Part 1, Listing 6). The properties file stored usernames, passwords, and user roles in text format. For most real-world applications, a properties file is not adequate storage for security information. For a variety of reasons, a directory server is often a much better choice. One reason is that real-world enterprise applications can be accessible to a large number of users -- often thousands of users, especially if the application exposes part of its functionality to customers and suppliers. It isn't efficient to frequently search through randomly stored information in a text file, but a directory server is optimized for such searches. Another reason is demonstrated by the properties file in Part 1, Listing 6, which combines users and roles. In a real-world access control application, you would typically want to define and maintain information about users and roles separately, which makes it easier to maintain a user base. A directory server provides you almost infinite flexibility to change or update user information, for example to reflect job promotions or new hires. See Resources to learn more about the uses and benefits of directory servers. LDAP directory setup If you want to store user information in an LDAP directory, you need to understand a few things about the directory setup. This article does not provide a complete introduction to LDAP (see Resources for that). Instead, it introduces the basic concepts you should know before attempting to use Acegi with LDAP directories. An LDAP directory stores information in the form of a tree of nodes, as shown in Figure 1: Figure 1. Tree structure of an LDAP directory

In Figure 1, the name of the root node is org. The root node can wrap data related to different enterprises. For example, the manufacturing enterprise developed in the first part of this series is shown as the immediate child node of the root org node. The manufacturing enterprise has two child nodes named departments and partners. The partners child node wraps different types of partners. The three shown in Figure 1 are customers, employees, and suppliers. Note that all three types of partner can act as users of the enterprise system. Each type of user has a different business role to play and therefore has different rights to access the system. Similarly, the departments node contains different departments of the manufacturing enterprise -- such as the child nodes engineering and marketing. Each department node also contains one or more groups of users. In Figure 1, the engineers group is a child node of the engineering department. This is assuming that the children of each department represent a group of users. Therefore, the children of department nodes have different users as their members. For example, all engineers working in the engineering department are members of the engineers group within the engineering department. Finally, notice the last child node of the departments node in Figure 1. specialUser is a user, not a group. In this directory setup, users like alice and bob would normally be contained in the partners node. I have included the special user in the departments node to demonstrate Acegi's flexibility in allowing users to reside anywhere in an LDAP directory. Later in the article, you will learn how to configure Acegi to accommodate specialUser. Using distinguished names LDAP uses the concept of a distinguished name (DN) to identify the particular nodes in an LDAP tree. Each node has a unique DN, which contains its complete hierarchical information. For example, look at Figure 2, which shows the DNs of some of the nodes introduced in Figure 1: Figure 2. Distinguished names of nodes in an LDAP directory

First, notice the DN of the root node in Figure 2. Its DN is dc=org, which is an attribute-value pair associated with the root org node. Every node can have a number of attributes associated with it. The dc attribute stands for "domain component" and is defined by LDAP RFC 2256 (see Resources for links to official RFC documentation). A root node in an LDAP directory is normally represented as a domain component. Each LDAP attribute is defined by an RFC. LDAP allows the use of many attributes to create a DN, but the examples in this article only use the following four:
dc (domain component) o(organization) ou (organizational unit) uid (user ID)

The examples use dc to denote domains, o for organization names, ou for different units of the organization, and uid for users. Because org is the root node, its DN only needs to specify its own name (dc=org). By contrast, the DN of the manufacturingEnterprise node is o=manufacturingEnterprise,dc=org. As you move down the tree of nodes, the DN of each parent nodes is included in the DN of its child nodes. Grouping attributes LDAP groups together related attribute types in the form of object classes. For example, an object class named organizationalPerson contains all the attributes that define a person working in an organization (for example, title, common name, postal address, and so on). Object classes use inheritance, which means LDAP defines base classes to hold commonly used attributes. Child classes then extend the base classes to use the attributes defined therein. A single node in an LDAP directory can use a number of object classes. The examples in this article use the following object classes:

The top object class is the base class for all object classes in LDAP. The domain object class is used when other object classes are not suitable for an object. It defines a set of attributes, any of which can be used to specify an object. Its dc attribute is mandatory. The organization object class represents organization nodes, such as manufacturingEnterprise in Figure 2. The organizationalUnit object class represents units within the organization, such as the departments node and its child nodes in Figure 1. The groupOfNames object class represents a group of names, such as the names of people working in a department. It has a member attribute, which can contain a list of users. All group nodes in Figure 1 (such as the engineers node) use the member attribute to specify members of the group. Moreover, the examples use

the ou (organizational unit) attribute of the groupOfNames object class to specify the business role of a group.

The organizationalPerson object class represents a person in an organization (such as the alice node in Figure 1).

Working with an LDAP server

In real-world applications, you normally host a lot of information about your system's users in an LDAP directory. For example, you store the username, password, job title, contact information, and payroll information for every user. For the sake of simplicity, the following examples show you how to store only the username and password. As previously mentioned, the examples use ApacheDS, an open source LDAP directory server, to demonstrate how Acegi works with LDAP directories. They also use an open source LDAP client called JXplorer to execute simple directory operations like hosting information on ApacheDS. See Resources to download ApacheDS and JXplorer and learn more about how the two work together. Creating a root node in ApacheDS To create the tree of nodes shown in Figure 1, you must first create the root node org in ApacheDS. ApacheDS provides an XML configuration file for this purpose. The XML configuration file defines a set of beans that you can configure to customize the directory server's behavior according to your application requirements. Here I explain only the configuration required to create a root node. You can find the XML configuration file named server.xml in the conf folder of your ApacheDS installation. When you open the file, you see a number of bean configurations similar to Acegi's filter configuration. Look for a bean named examplePartitionsConfiguration. This bean controls partitions in ApacheDS. When you create a new root node, you actually create a new partition in an LDAP directory. Edit the examplePartitionConfiguration bean to create the root org node, as shown in Listing 1:

Listing 1. Edited form of the examplePartitionConfiguration bean configuration

<bean id="examplePartitionConfiguration" class= "org.apache.directory.server.core.partition.impl.btree.MutableBTreePartiti onConfiguration" > <property name="suffix"><value>dc=org</value></property> <property name="contextEntry"> <value> objectClass: top objectClass: domain dc: org </value> </property> <!-- Other properties of the examplePartitionConfiguration bean, which you don't need to edit. --> </bean>

Listing 1 edits two properties of the examplePartitionConfiguration bean:

A property named suffix that defines the DN of the root entry. A property named contextEntry that defines the object class that the root org node will use. Notice that the root org node uses two object classes: top and domain.

The source code download for this article includes the edited form of the server.xml file. If you want to follow along with the example, copy the server.xml file from the source code into its correct location in your ApacheDS installation, which is the conf folder. Figure 3 is a screenshot showing how JXplorer displays the root node once it is created in ApacheDS:

Figure 3. The root node displayed by JXplorer

Populating the server The next step in setting up the LDAP server is to populate it with information about your users and groups. You can use JXplorer to create nodes in ApacheDS one by one, but it is much easier to simply populate the server using the LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF). LDIF is a well-known format recognized by most LDAP implementations. The composition of LDIF files is well-documented in developerWorks articles, so I won't explain it in detail here. (See Resources to learn more about LDIF.) Instead, you can see the LDIF file in the source code download that represents the users and departments shown in Figure 1. You can use JXplorer to import the LDIF file into ApacheDS. To import the LDIF file, use the LDIF menu on JXplorer, as shown in Figure 4:

Figure 4. Importing an LDIF file into ApacheDS

Once you have imported the LDIF file into ApacheDS, your JXplorer displays the tree of user nodes and department nodes, as shown in Figure 1. Now you are ready to begin configuring Acegi to communicate with your LDAP server

Configuring Acegi for an LDAP implementation

Recall from Part 1 that Acegi uses the Authentication Processing Filter (APF) for authentication. APF performs all back-end authentication processing tasks, such as extracting the username and password from a client request, reading the user's parameters from the back-end user base, and using the information to authenticate the user. You configured APF for a properties file implementation in Part 1. Now you have stored your user base in an LDAP directory, so you must configure the filter somewhat differently to talk to your LDAP directory. Start by looking at Listing 2, which shows how the APF filter was configured for a properties file implementation in the "Authentication Processing Filter" section of Part 1:

Listing 2. Configuring APF for a properties file

<bean id="authenticationProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFilter"> <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager" /> <property name="authenticationFailureUrl" value="/login.jsp?login_error=1" /> <property name="defaultTargetUrl" value="/index.jsp" /> <property name="filterProcessesUrl" value="/j_acegi_security_check" /> </bean>

Looking at Listing 2, recall that you provided four parameters to APF. You only need to reconfigure the first parameter (the authenticationManager) for storage in an LDAP server. The other three parameters remain the same. Configuring the authentication manager Listing 3 shows how to configure Acegi's authentication manager to communicate with an LDAP server: Listing 3. Configuring Acegi's authentication manager for LDAP

<bean id="authenticationManager" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager"> <property name="providers"> <list> <ref local="ldapAuthenticationProvider" /> </list> </property> </bean>

In Listing 3, org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager is the manager class that manages Acegi's authentication process. To do its job, the authentication manager requires one or more authentication providers. You can use the provider property of the manager bean to configure one or more providers. Listing 3 includes only one provider, the LDAP authentication provider. The LDAP authentication provider handles all communication with your back-end LDAP directory. You must also configure it, as discussed next.

Configuring the LDAP authentication provider Listing 4 shows the configuration for the LDAP authentication provider: Listing 4. Configuring the LDAP Authentication Provider
<bean id="ldapAuthenticationProvider" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ldap.LdapAuthenticationProvider"> <constructor-arg><ref local="authenticator"/></constructor-arg> <constructor-arg><ref local="populator"/></constructor-arg> </bean>

Note

class is org.acegisecurity.providers.ldap.LdapAuthenticationProvider . Its constructor takes two parameters in the form of two <constructor-arg> tags, as shown in Listing 4. The parameter to the LdapAuthenticationProvider constructor is which authenticates a user with the LDAP directory by verifying the user's username and password. Once the user is authenticated, the second parameter, populator, retrieves information about the user's access rights (or business roles) from the LDAP directory.
authenticator,

that

the

name

of

the

LDAP

authentication

provider

first

The following sections show you how to configure the authenticator and populator beans.

Configuring the authenticator

The authenticator bean checks whether a user exists in the LDAP directory with a given username and password. Acegi provides an authenticator class named org.acegisecurity.providers.ldap.authenticator.BindAuthenticator, which performs the required function of checking the username and password of the user. Configure the authenticator bean as shown in Listing 5:

Listing 5. Configuring the authenticator bean

<bean id="authenticator" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ldap.authenticator.BindAuthenticator"> <constructor-arg><ref local="initialDirContextFactory"/></constructor-arg> <property name="userDnPatterns"> <list> <value>uid={0},ou=employees,ou=partners</value> <value>uid={0},ou=customers,ou=partners</value> <value>uid={0},ou=suppliers,ou=partners</value> </list> </property> <property name="userSearch"><ref local="userSearch"/></property> </bean>

In Listing 5, the BindAuthenticator constructor takes one parameter in the form of a <constructor-arg> tag. The name of the parameter in Listing 5 is initialDirContextFactory. This parameter is actually another bean, which you will learn how to configure in just a moment. For now, just know that the purpose of the initialDirContextFactory bean is to specify an initial context for later search operations. The initial context is a DN that specifies a particular node within the LDAP directory. Once you specify the initial context, all later search operations (such as locating a particular user) take place within the child nodes of that node. For example, look at the partners node back in Figure 2, whose DN is ou=partners,o=manufacturingEnterprise,dc=org. If you specify the partners node as the initial context, Acegi looks for users only among child nodes of the partners node. Specifying DN patterns In addition to configuring the BindAuthenticator constructor, you must also configure two properties of the authenticator bean (the two <property> tags in Listing 5). The first <property> tag defines a userDnPatterns property, which wraps a list of one or more DN patterns. A DN pattern specifies a number of LDAP nodes that have something in common (such as all the child nodes of the employees node in Figure 2). Acegi's authenticator constructs one DN from each DN pattern configured in the userDnPatterns property of the authenticator bean. For example, look at the first DN pattern configured in Listing 5, which is uid={0},ou=employees,ou=partners. The authenticator bean replaces the {0} with the username supplied by the user (say, alice) during authentication. After replacing {0} with the username, the DN pattern becomes a relative DN (RDN), uid=alice,ou=employees,ou=partners, which needs an initial context to become a DN.

For example, look at alice's entry in Figure 2. This entry is the first child of the employees node. Its DN is uid=alice,ou=employees,ou=partners,o=manufacturingEnterprise, dc=org. If you use o=manufacturingEnterprise,dc=org as an initial context and append it after the RDN uid=alice,ou=employees,ou=partners, you get alice's DN. After constructing the user's DN from a DN pattern in this way, the authenticator sends the DN and the user's password to the LDAP directory. The directory checks whether the DN exists with a correct password. If so, the user is authenticated. This process is called bind authentication in LDAP terminology. LDAP offers other authentication mechanisms, but the examples here only use bind authentication. If the DN created by the first DN pattern does not exist in the directory, the authenticator bean tries the next DN pattern configured in the list. In this way, the authenticator bean tries all DN patterns to construct the correct DN of the user who is asking to be authenticated. Search filters Recall from the earlier section called "LDAP directory setup" that I allowed for a bit of flexibility in storing user information in the LDAP directory. I did this by creating a special user (specialUser) within the departments node shown in Figure 1. If you try to create the DN of the special user using any of the DN patterns configured in Listing 5, you will find that none of the patterns is suitable to create the DN of the special user. As a result, when that user tries to log in, Acegi's authenticator bean is unable to construct the correct DN and therefore is unable to authenticate the user. Acegi handles special cases like this one by allowing you to specify search filters. The authenticator bean uses search filters to find users that it cannot authenticate by constructing a DN from the DN patterns. The second <property> tag in Listing 5 has a <ref> child tag, which refers to a bean named userSearch. The userSearch bean specifies the search query. Listing 6 shows how to configure the userSearch bean to handle special users:

Listing 6. Configuring a search query to search for special users

<bean id="userSearch" class="org.acegisecurity.ldap.search.FilterBasedLdapUserSearch"> <constructor-arg> <value>ou=departments</value> </constructor-arg> <constructor-arg> <value>(uid={0})</value> </constructor-arg> <constructor-arg> <ref local="initialDirContextFactory" /> </constructor-arg> <property name="searchSubtree"> <value>true</value> </property> </bean>

Parameters of the search query Listing 6 shows that the userSearch bean is an instance of a class named org.acegisecurity.ldap.search.FilterBasedLdapUserSearch, whose constructor takes three parameters. The first parameter specifies the node where the authenticator searches for the users. The value of the first parameter is ou=departments, which is an RDN that specifies the departments node shown in Figure 2. The second parameter, (uid={0}), specifies a search filter. Because you are using the uid attribute to specify users, you can find a user by looking for a node whose uid attribute has a particular value. As you can guess, zero in curly brackets simply tells Acegi to replace {0} with the username of the user to be authenticated (in this case specialUser). The third parameter is a reference to the same initial context that I introduced while discussing the BindAuthenticator constructor in Listing 5. Recall that once the initial context has been specified, all later search operations take place within the child nodes of that initial context node. Note that the RDN specified as the value of the first parameter in Listing 5 (ou=departments) is prepended before the initial context. In addition to these three constructor parameters, the userSearch bean shown in Listing 6 also takes a property named searchSubtree. If you specify its value as true, the search operation includes the sub tree (that is, all children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc.) of the node you specify as the value of the first constructor parameter. The configuration of the authenticator bean is complete. The next section looks at the configuration of the populator bean, also shown in Listing 4.

Configuring the populator

The populator bean reads the business roles of a user already authenticated by the authenticator bean. Listing 7 shows the XML configuration of the populator bean: Listing 7. XML configuration for the populator bean
<bean id="populator" class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ldap.populator.DefaultLdapAuthoritiesPo pulator"> <constructor-arg> <ref local="initialDirContextFactory"/> </constructor-arg> <constructor-arg> <value>ou=departments</value> </constructor-arg> <property name="groupRoleAttribute"> <value>ou</value> </property> <property name="searchSubtree"> <value>true</value> </property> </bean>

In Listing 7, the populator bean takes two arguments in its constructor, as well as a property named groupRoleAttribute. The first constructor parameter specifies the initial context that the populator bean uses to read the business roles of an authenticated user. It is not mandatory to use the same initial context for both the authenticator and populator beans. You can configure a separate initial context for each one. The second constructor argument specifies an RDN that the populator prepends before the initial context. In this way, the RDN forms the DN of a node that contains groups of users, such as the departments node. The groupRoleAttribute property of the populator bean specifies the attribute that holds data about the business roles of members of the group. Recall from the section about setting up the LDAP directory that you stored information about the business roles of each group in an attribute named ou. You then configured ou as a value of the groupRoleAttribute property, as shown in Listing 7. As you can guess, the populator bean searches through the LDAP directory to find the nodes of the groups to which an authenticated user belongs. It then reads the values attached to the ou attributes of the group nodes to learn the user's authorized business roles. This completes the configuration of the populator bean. So far, you have used an initial context in three places: in Listing 5, Listing 6, and Listing 7. Next you will learn how to configure the initial context.

Configuring the initial context Listing 8 shows how to specify an initial context in Acegi: Listing 8. XML configuration of an initial context
<bean id="initialDirContextFactory" class="org.acegisecurity.ldap.DefaultInitialDirContextFactory"> <constructor-arg value="ldap://localhost:389/o=manufacturingEnterprise,dc=org"/> <property name="managerDn"> <value>cn=manager,o=manufacturingEnterprise,dc=org</value> </property> <property name="managerPassword"> <value>secret</value> </property> </bean>

The

Listing 8 is org.acegisecurity.ldap.DefaultInitialDirContextFactory, which is a factory class included in Acegi. Acegi internally uses this class to construct objects of other classes that handle directory operations like searching through the directory. You must specify the following when configuring the initial context factory:

name

of

Acegi's

initial

context

class

in

The network address of your LDAP directory and your root directory node as a constructor parameter. The node you configure in the initial context is taken as the root node. This means all later operations (such as search) are performed on the subtree defined by the root node. A DN and password, defined as managerDn and managerPassword properties, respectively. Acegi must have the DN and password to authenticate itself with your directory server before it can perform any search operations.

You have learned how to host your user base in an LDAP directory and how to configure Acegi to use the information from the LDAP directory to authenticate your users. The next section digs deeper into Acegi's Authentication Processing Filter to see how its newly configured beans manage the process of authentication.

Authentication and authorization

Once APF is configured, it is ready to begin talking with the LDAP directory to authenticate a user. Some of the steps APF follows in its communication with the directory will be familiar to you from Part 1, where I showed you how this filter works with different services for the purpose of user authentication. The sequence diagram shown in Figure 5 is very similar to the one you saw in Part 1, Figure 3: Figure 5. APF authenticates an LDAP user

Steps 1 through 9 are the same regardless of whether APF is using a properties file for internal authentication or communicating with an LDAP server. The first nine steps are recapped here, and then you can continue into the events specific to LDAP starting with Step 10: 1. The previous filter in the filter chain passes request, response, and filter chain objects to APF. 2. APF creates an authentication token with the username, password, and other information fetched from the request object. 3. APF passes the authentication token to the authentication manager. 4. The authentication manager may contain one or more authentication providers. Each provider supports exactly one type of authentication. The manager checks which of its providers support the authentication token received from APF. 5. The authentication manager passes the authentication token to the provider suitable for authentication. 6. The authentication provider extracts the username from the authentication token and passes it to a service called user cache service. Acegi maintains a cache of users who have been authenticated. The next time the user signs in, Acegi can load his or her details (such as username, password, and privileges) from the

cache instead of reading from back-end data storage. This improves performance. 7. The user cache service checks whether details of the user exist in the cache. 8. The user cache service returns the details of the user to the authentication provider. If the cache does not contain user details, it returns null. 9. The authentication provider checks whether the cache service returned details of the user or null. 10. From here on, authentication processing becomes specific to LDAP. If the cache returned null, the LDAP authentication provider passes the username (extracted in Step 6) and password to the authenticator bean configured in Listing 5. 11. The authenticator creates user DNs using the DN patterns configured in the userDnPatterns property of Listing 5. It tries all the available DN patterns one by one by creating a DN from a DN pattern and sending it along with the user's password (fetched from the user's request) to the LDAP directory. The LDAP directory checks whether the DN exists and the password is correct. If any of the DN patterns works, the user is said to be bound with the LDAP directory and the authenticator moves on to Step 15. 12. If none of the DN patterns work (which means the user does not exist with the given password at any of the locations specified by the DN patterns), the authenticator searches for the user in the LDAP directory according to the search query configured in Listing 6. If the LDAP directory cannot find the user, authentication fails. 13. If the LDAP directory finds the user, it returns the user's DN back to the authenticator. 14. The authenticator sends the user's DN and password to the LDAP directory to check whether the user's password is correct. If the LDAP directory finds that the password is correct, the user is said to be bound with the LDAP directory. 15. The authenticator sends the user information back to the LDAP authentication provider. 16. The LDAP authentication provider transfers control to the populator bean. 17. The populator searches for groups the user belongs to. 18. The LDAP directory returns the user's role information to the populator. 19. The populator returns the role information to the LDAP authentication provider. 20. The LDAP authentication provider returns details of the user (along with information about user's business roles) back to APF. The user is now successfully authenticated.

The last three steps (Steps 21, 22, and 23) are the same regardless of authentication method. Configuring the Interceptor You have seen the steps by which APF authenticates a user. The next step is to check whether a successfully authenticated user is authorized to access a requested resource. This is the job of Acegi's Interceptor Filter (IF). This section shows you how to configure IF to implement an access control policy. Recall that you configured IF in Part 1, Listing 7. The Interceptor Filter maps resources with roles, which means that only users having the required role can access a given resource. To demonstrate the business roles of different departments of the manufacturing enterprise, Listing 9 adds another role to the existing IF configuration: Listing 9. Configuring the interceptor filter
<bean id="filterInvocationInterceptor" class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.FilterSecurityInterceptor"> <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager" /> <property name="accessDecisionManager" ref="accessDecisionManager" /> <property name="objectDefinitionSource"> <value> CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT /protected/engineering/**=ROLE_HEAD_OF_ENGINEERING /protected/marketing/**=ROLE_HEAD_OF_MARKETING /**=IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY </value> </property> </bean>

In Listing 9, IF takes three parameters. The first and third parameter are the same ones originally configured in Part 1. The second parameter (a bean named accessDecisionManager) has been added. The accessDecisionManager bean is responsible for making authorization decisions. It uses the access control definitions provided by the third parameter shown in Listing 9 to make authorization (or access control) decisions. The third parameter is objectDefinitionSource.

Configuring the access decision manager The accessDecisionManager decides whether a user is allowed to access a resource. Acegi provides a number of access decision managers, which vary in how they make

access control decisions. This article explains only the workings of one access decision manager, which is configured in Listing 10: Listing 10. Configuring the access decision manger
<bean id="accessDecisionManager" class="org.acegisecurity.vote.AffirmativeBased"> <property name="decisionVoters"> <list> <bean class="org.acegisecurity.vote.RoleVoter"/> <bean class="org.acegisecurity.vote.AuthenticatedVoter" /> </list> </property> </bean>

In Listing 10, the accessDecisionManager bean is an instance of a class named org.acegisecurity.vote.AffirmativeBased. The accessDecisionManager bean takes just one parameter, which is a list of voters. In Acegi, voters determine whether a user is allowed to access a particular resource. When queried by the accessDecisionManager, a voter has three options: it can vote access-granted, access-denied, or abstain from voting if it is not sure. The different types of access decision managers differ in how they interpret voter decisions. The AffirmativeBased access decision manager shown in Listing 10 implements simple decision logic: if any voter casts an affirmative vote, it allows the user to access the requested resource. Voter logic Acegi provides several types of voter implementation. The accessDecisionManager passes information about an authenticated user (including the user's business roles) and the objectDefinitionSource object to a voter. The example here uses two types of voter, RoleVoter and AuthenticatedVoter, as shown in Listing 10. Now consider the logic of each voter:

RoleVoter votes only if it can find a role starting with the prefix ROLE_ in a line inside the objectDefinitionSource object. If RoleVoter cannot find any such line, it abstains from voting; if it finds a matching role among the business roles of a user, it votes access-granted; if it cannot find a matching role, it votes access-denied. In Listing 9, there are two roles with the prefix of ROLE_: ROLE_HEAD_OF_ENGINEERING and ROLE_HEAD_OF_MARKETING. AuthenticatedVoter votes only if it finds lines with some predefined role in the objectDefinitionSource object. In Listing 9, there is one such line: IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY. Anonymous authentication means that the user could not be authenticated. On finding this line, the AuthenticatedVoter checks whether some of the non-protected resources (that is, resources not included in any line with the ROLE_ prefix) can be accessed by an anonymously

authenticated user. If AuthenticatedVoter finds that the requested resource is non-protected and the objectDefinitionSource object allows the nonprotected resource to be accessed by an anonymously authenticated user, it votes access-granted; otherwise, it votes access-denied.

The example application

This article provides an example application that demonstrates the LDAP and Acegi concepts you have learned so far. The LDAP-Acegi application displays an index page that presents engineering and marketing documents to properly authenticated users. As you will see, the LDAP-Acegi application allows user alice to view engineering documents and user bob to view marketing documents. It also allows a special user to view both engineering and marketing documents. All of this was set up at the beginning of the article when you configured the LDAP directory server. Download the example application to begin exploring it now.

In conclusion
In this article, you have learned how to host user and business role information in an LDAP directory. You have also learned in detail how to configure Acegi to interact with an LDAP directory and implement an access control policy. In the final installment of this series, I will show you how to configure Acegi to secure access to your Java classes.