I'm using PrettyFaces 3.3.3. I have a requirement that if a user tries to view a page, but is not logged in, they are sent to the login page, and then redirected to the original page they wanted to view. Just wondering what would be the best approach for this.
You probably want a security framework here. The basic idea is that you'd want to intercept the requested URL in your security filter, save it into the user's session, then once authentication is complete (e.g. user has submitted the form with their credentials, or whatever mechanism you're using) you retrieve the saved URL from the user's session and perform a 302 Redirect to it.
This is not something PrettyFaces will help you with directly, except that you can use it to capture the URL more easily using PrettyContext.getCurrentInstance(request).getRequestURL();
There is an article about this here: http://ocpsoft.org/java/jsf-java/spring-security-what-happens-after-you-log-in/
Using OCPsoft Rewrite (core of PrettyFaces 4) you can do this programatically as well, and even do the authentication directly in your security rules or annotation config: https://github.com/ocpsoft/prettyfaces/blob/master/annotations/src/test/java/org/ocpsoft/prettyfaces/annotation/jaas/JaasRolesBean.java
This is an upcoming feature but is not yet complete - we would love feedback.
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I have a form that allows a user to either login or register.
When the user lands on the page containing the form, the request is saved in a RequestCache object (I'm using Spring Security).
In the case that the user decides to register, I want to mimic the behavior of the Spring Security onAuthenticationSuccess code, where the user is redirected to whatever page they were trying to get to before logging in (or, in my case, before registering).
To accomplish that, I added the following code to the RegistrationController:
authenticationSuccessHandler.onAuthenticationSuccess(request, response, springSecurityService.authentication)
My question is, is this a reasonable approach to handle the on registration success use case? Am I doing enough?
Best way would be to keep a link to the original requested URL in a hidden formitem on the registration page and redirect after registration. Try to keep the security layer as simple and close to the original intend as possible.
I'm using Grails and Spring Security. Some methods of the controller are annotated with #Secured and when the logged in user doesn't have the necessary roles I want him to be redirected to the last visited page instead of to /login/denied.
I guess that the real question is how to get the last page visited so that I can redirect him accordingly from the denied method?
There is a way to do this in JavaScript, using back button, but I am looking for a way to achieve this on the server side.
maybe you could use an interceptor to store the history of you views and then with an accessDeniedHandler redirect to the previous one
We have some shopping cart pages which work with both guest and user paths. We want to allow a user to login at any time during the process but don't really want to create yet another login page. I'd prefer that we can simply redirect the user to the existing login and tell Spring Security what URL to come back to.
I know this happens automatically when sessions timeout and/or protected pages are requested without a session, but is there a way I can give the URL to Spring Security myself?
If you just need a simple return-to URL to retrieve the cart, then you are probably best to implement that yourself in an AuthenticationSuccessHandler. You can look at the source for SimpleUrlAuthenticationSuccessHandler and its parent for inspiration.
The default login mechanism uses the RequestCache and a SavedRequest, but that is intended to actually replay a request which would not otherwise be authorised. That's probably overkill in your case.
We are attempting to integrate an ASP.NET MVC site with our client's SSO system using PingFederate. I would like to use the built in FormsAuthentication framework to do this. The way I've gone about it so far is:
Set up my Web.config so that my FormsAuthentication LoginURL goes to my site's "BeginAuthentication" action on a "Security" controller. From this action, I set up some session variables (what URL was being accessed, for example, since Ping won't send this info back to me), and then redirect to our client's login page on an external site (www.client.com/Login for example).
From here, the authentication takes place and a cookie is generated on the same domain as the one that our application is running on which contains the unique identifier of the authenticated user, I've set it up so that once this happens, the Ping server will redirect to my "EndAuthentication" action on my "Security" controller.
In this action, I call my membership class's "ValidateUser" method which takes this unique identifier from the cookie and loads in the user on our application that this ID refers to. I save that logged in user in our Session (Session["LoggedInAs"], for example) and expire the cookie that contains the id of the authenticated user that the SSO system provided for me.
All of this works well. The issue I'm wondering about is what happens after our user has already authenticated and manually goes back to our client's login page (www.client.com/login) and logs in as another user. If they do that, then the flow from #2 above to number 3 happens as normal - but since there already exists an authenticated user on our site, it seems as though the FormsAuthentication system doesn't bother kicking off anything so I don't get a chance to check for the cookie I'm looking for to login as this new user. What I'd like to do is, somewhere in my Global.asax file (probably FormsAuthenticate_OnAuthenticate), check to see if the cookie that the SSO system sends to me exists, and if so, sign out of the application using FormsAuthentication.SignOut().
Another issue that seems to be related is that if I let my Session expire, the FormsAuthentication still seems to think I am authenticated and it lets me access a page even though no currently logged in user exists in my Session, so the page doesn't render correctly. Should I tap into the Session_End event and do FormsAuthentication.SignOut() here as well?
Basically, I want to know when the authentication ticket created by
System.Web.Security.FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(..) gets checked in the flow of a request so that I can determine whether I need to SignOut() and force revalidation or not.
Thanks for any help. Sorry for the length of this message, trying to be as detailed as possible.
Mustafa
Welcome to the small section of Hades that is mixing session with formsauth.
If your needs are as complex as presented, you would get more sleep if you implement a full provider stack to share amongst the participating sites. Easier said than done, I know.
But to address your question:
from http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/39026/Exploring-Web-config-system-web-httpModules.aspx
On the way in....Check ticket and set identity #
app.AuthenticateRequest += System.Web.Security.FormsAuthenticationModule.OnEnter-->OnAuthenticate
On the way out... set the ticket and redirect as necessary
app.EndRequest += System.Web.Security.FormsAuthenticationModule.OnLeave
Reflector is your friend. ;-)
I don't know about a specific event for when the cookie is checked, but you could place the appropriate logic in Application_BeginRequest() and check the user's authentication state there.
Another issue that seems to be related
is that if I let my Session expire,
the FormsAuthentication still seems to
think I am authenticated and it lets
me access a page even though no
currently logged in user exists in my
Session, so the page doesn't render
correctly.
The life of the cookie (how long until ASP.NET feels it needs to ask for a password again) and how you are managing state are unrelated. The ASP.NET authentication is cookie based so that, should a developer want to, he could turn off viewstate, session, use no query strings or hidden fields and authentication still works.
If you want to tie the interval at which you request the password to how you are persisting data, then you will want your session expiration to be roughly the same as the cookie expiration, but they will never quite match up. It would be better to have two policies (one for how fast you throw away a users session data and one for how long you are willing to wait before you need to reask for a password)
I'm working on a project where certain logged in users have a dedicated page which they can choose the url of. When a user logins in i would like to display a link "View my page". I was just wondering what is the best way to store this baring in mind it needs to be accessible for as long as the user is logged in (The site has a remember me feature as well). Would a session variable surfice? or a cookie? Or a custom IPrincipal?
Many thanks
Matt
UPDATE:
What do you guys thing of using the UserData string you can store with the authentication cookie? It seems to satisfy my requirements, but i can't say I know a lot about it.
Forms authentication (based on cookie) should be enough. Here you can read about using FormsAuthentication with custom IPrincipal:
ASP.NET 2.0 Forms authentication - Keeping it customized yet simple
This page is about how forms authentication works:
Explained: Forms Authentication in ASP.NET 2.0
When you use forms authentication, you have Authorize attribute to limit access to controllers and action. It works pretty well. Your own IPrincipal is not necessary. I wouldn't use Session, because it can be easily lost.
Thanks guys, however I have ended up using the UserData string that you can store along with the authentication cookie. This way I know the data will always be available while the user is authenticated. And since I only need to remember simple data (the users url), this seems like a good solution.
Anybody with the same problem can find more info here:
http://www.asp.net/learn/security/tutorial-03-cs.aspx (See step 4)
If what you mean is that you want to display a different custom URL for each user and you simply want to cache that URL then there's a few things to consider:
If you use a session value or a cookie then you need code for the possibility of the value not being present. Both the server session or the browser session could expire and the user could still be logged in.
If you use a cookie you could consider setting the cookie expiry to the same as the authentication cookie expiry but this still doesn't guarantee availability.
A cookie value will not be secure, it could be modified. A session value will be secure.
If you're using custom forms authentication then you could store the URL in the authentication cookie itself and then load it into a custom IPrincipal. I would advise against that as I don't feel it's the right place.
If you're just trying to cache the URL then as long as your code re-fetches the data when the value is not present then a session value or a cookie will be fine depending on the level of security required.
If I have read that wrong and you just want to show/hide a link to depending on whether a user is authorized or not you can simple use
<% if (User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { %>
view my page
<% } %>
And have your MyPage action in your controller render the dedicated page for the user.