The spring-webmvc-pac4j project is an easy and powerful security library for Spring Web MVC / Spring Boot web applications and web services. It supports authentication and authorization, but also logout and advanced features like session fixation and CSRF protection. It's based on the pac4j security engine. It's available under the Apache 2 license.

spring-webmvc-pac4j	JDK	pac4j	Spring	Usage of Lombok	Status
version >= 8	17	v6	v6+	Yes	Production ready
version >= 7	17	v5	v6	No	Production ready
version >= 5	11	v5	v5	No	Production ready
version >= 4	8	v4	v5	No	Production ready

Main concepts and components:

1. A client represents an authentication mechanism. It performs the login process and returns a user profile. An indirect client is for web application authentication while a direct client is for web services authentication:

▸ OpenID Connect - OAuth - SAML - CAS - HTTP - LDAP - SQL - JWT - MongoDB - IP address - Kerberos (SPNEGO) - REST API

2. An authorizer is meant to check authorizations on the authenticated user profile(s) or on the current web context:

▸ Roles - Anonymous / remember-me / (fully) authenticated - Profile type, attribute - CORS - CSRF - Security headers - IP address, HTTP method

3. A matcher defines whether the SecurityInterceptor must be applied and can be used for additional web processing

Directly available via the Pac4jSecurityConfig component:

4. The SecurityInterceptor protects an url by checking that the user is authenticated and that the authorizations are valid, according to the clients and authorizers configuration. If the user is not authenticated, it performs authentication for direct clients or starts the login process for indirect clients

5. The CallbackController finishes the login process for an indirect client

6. The LogoutController logs out the user from the application and triggers the logout at the identity provider level

7. The JEEContext and the ProfileManager components can be injected

8. The @RequireAnyRole and @RequireAllRoles annotations check the user roles.

Usage

1) Add the required dependencies

2) Define:

- the security configuration

- the callback configuration, only for web applications

- the logout configuration

3) Apply security

4) Get the authenticated user profiles

Demos

Start with the simple-spring-boot-pac4j-demos with OIDC, CAS and SAML2 support.

The other demo webapps for Spring Web MVC without Spring Boot: spring-webmvc-pac4j-demo or with Spring Boot: spring-webmvc-pac4j-boot-demo are available for tests and implement many more authentication mechanisms: Facebook, Twitter, form, basic auth, CAS, SAML, OpenID Connect, JWT...

Versions

The latest released version is the . The next version is under development.

See the release notes.

See the migration guide as well.

Need help?

You can use the mailing lists or the commercial support.