Last updated by burtbeckwith 3 years ago

Basic Tutorial using Controller Annotations

There are three ways to define security mappings - see Securing URLs for more details. This tutorial uses Controller annotations. To specify security mappings using database Requestmap entries use this tutorial and use the traditional Spring Security approach use this tutorial.

Create your Grails application

# grails create-app bookstore
# cd bookstore

Install the Spring Security plugin

# grails install-plugin acegi

Create the User, Role, and Requestmap domain classes

# grails create-auth-domains User Role Requestmap

You can choose other names for User, Role, and Requestmap, and can create them in packages; these are just examples.
Note: Depending on your database, some names might not be valid. This goes for any domain classes you create, but names for security seem to have an affinity towards trouble. So before you use names like "User" or "Group", make sure they are not reserved keywords in your database :)

The script will create this User class:

/**
 * User domain class.
 */
class User {
   static transients = ['pass']
   static hasMany = [authorities: Role]
   static belongsTo = Role   /** Username */
   String username
   /** User Real Name*/
   String userRealName
   /** MD5 Password */
   String passwd
   /** enabled */
   boolean enabled
   String email
   boolean emailShow
   /** description */
   String description = ''
   /** plain password to create a MD5 password */
   String pass = '[secret]'
   static constraints = {
      username(blank: false, unique: true)
      userRealName(blank: false)
      passwd(blank: false)
      enabled()
   }
}

and this Role class:

/**
 * Authority domain class.
 */
class Role {   static hasMany = [people: User]
   /** description */
   String description
   /** ROLE String */
   String authority
   static constraints = {
      authority(blank: false, unique: true)
      description()
   }
}

and this Requestmap class:

/**
 * Request Map domain class.
 */
class Requestmap {   String url
   String configAttribute
   static constraints = {
      url(blank: false, unique: true)
      configAttribute(blank: false)
   }
}

Optional - create controllers and GSPs for User, Role, and Requestmap domain classes

# grails generate-manager

will create:

grails-app/controllers/RequestmapController.groovy
grails-app/controllers/RoleController.groovy
grails-app/controllers/UserController.groovy
grails-app/views/requestmap/create.gsp, edit.gsp, list.gsp, view.gsp
grails-app/views/role/create.gsp, edit.gsp, list.gsp, view.gsp
grails-app/views/user/create.gsp, edit.gsp, list.gsp, view.gsp

Note that these generated files are not part of the plugin - these are application files. So you're free to edit them however you like - they're examples to get you started. You could also generate standard Grails controllers and GSPs using

# grails generate-all User
# grails generate-all Role
# grails generate-all Requestmap

although for this tutorial I assume you're using the plugin-generated files.

If you are not using the generated UserController, you need to insert the following code to the save and update closures to make sure your password is MD5 encoded.

In the update action, add this after userInstance.properties = params

userInstance.passwd = authenticateService.encodePassword(params.passwd)

In the save action, add this after def userInstance = new User(params)

userInstance.passwd = authenticateService.encodePassword(params.passwd)

To add lines above, you must

declare authenticateService by adding
```
def authenticateService
```
as a field in the controller

Optional - create controllers and GSPs for Captcha, Register, and an Emailer Service.

# grails generate-registration

will create:

grails-app/controllers/CaptchaController.groovy
grails-app/controllers/RegisterController.groovy
grails-app/services/EmailerService.groovy
grails-app/views/register/edit.gsp, index.gsp, show.gsp

Again note that these generated files are not part of the plugin - these are application files that you're free to edit and customize.

Optional - delete Requestmap files

Since you'll be annotating Controllers and not using the Requestmap class or database table, you can delete the domain class (grails-app/domain/Requestmap.groovy), Controller (grails-app/controllers/RequestmapController.groovy) and GSPs (grails-app/views/requestmap/*) if you like.

Configure annotation support

Edit grails-app/conf/SecurityConfig.groovy:

change the 'useRequestMapDomainClass' property to false
add a 'useControllerAnnotations' property and set its value to true

so the resulting file will be

security {   // see DefaultSecurityConfig.groovy for all settable/overridable properties
   active = true
   loginUserDomainClass = "User"
   authorityDomainClass = "Role"
   useRequestMapDomainClass = false
   useControllerAnnotations = true
}

Create a controller that will be restricted by role

# grails create-controller Secure

This will create grails-app/controllers/SecureController.groovy - add some output so we can verify that things are working:

class SecureController {
   def index = {
      render 'Secure access only'
   }
}

Start the server

# grails run-app

Before we secure the page, navigate to http://localhost:8080/bookstore/secure to verify that you can see the page without being logged in:

Navigate to http://localhost:8080/bookstore/role/create and create an 'ROLE_ADMIN' role:

and navigate to http://localhost:8080/bookstore/user/create to create a test user:

Edit SecureController.groovy to import the required class "org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.springsecurity.Secured" and add an annotation to restrict access:

import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.springsecurity.Securedclass SecureController {
   @Secured(['ROLE_ADMIN'])
   def index = {
      render 'Secure access only'
   }
}

import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.springsecurity.Secured@Secured(['ROLE_ADMIN'])
class SecureController {
   def index = {
      render 'Secure access only'
   }
}

You can annotate the entire controller or individual actions. In this case since we only have one action we can do either.

You should be able to edit controllers in development mode without restarting but as of this writing it's not always possible, so you may need to restart the app after adding the annotation.

Now navigate again to http://localhost:8080/bookstore/secure and this time, you should be presented with the login page:

When logging in, you can test the Remember Me functionality. Check the checkbox, and once you've tested the secure page close your browser and re-open it. Navigate again the the secure page, and since you have a cookie stored, you shouldn't need to log in again. Logout at any time by navigating to http://localhost:8080/bookstore/logout