How do I remove the ROLE_ prefix from Spring Secur

Question

I'm trying to remove the "ROLE_" prefix in Spring Security. The first thing I tried was:

http.servletApi().rolePrefix("");

That didn't work, so I tried creating a BeanPostProcessor as suggested in http://docs.spring.io/spring-security/site/migrate/current/3-to-4/html5/migrate-3-to-4-jc.html#m3to4-role-prefixing-disable. That didn't work either.

Finally, I tried creating my own SecurityExpressionHandler:

  @Override
  protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
      http
          .authorizeRequests()
          .expressionHandler(webExpressionHandler())
          .antMatchers("/restricted").fullyAuthenticated()
          .antMatchers("/foo").hasRole("mycustomrolename")
          .antMatchers("/**").permitAll();
  }

  private SecurityExpressionHandler<FilterInvocation> webExpressionHandler() {
      DefaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler defaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler = new DefaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler();
      defaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler.setDefaultRolePrefix("");
      return defaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler;
  }

However, this doesn't work either. If I use "hasAuthority(roleName)" instead of hasRole, it works as expected.

Is it possible to remove the ROLE_ prefix from Spring Security's hasRole check?

Answer 1

Starting from Spring 4.2, you can define the prefix with a single bean, as described here: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-security/issues/4134

@Bean
GrantedAuthorityDefaults grantedAuthorityDefaults() {
    return new GrantedAuthorityDefaults(""); // Remove the ROLE_ prefix
}

XML version:

<beans:bean id="grantedAuthorityDefaults" class="org.springframework.security.config.core.GrantedAuthorityDefaults">
    <beans:constructor-arg value="" />
</beans:bean>

Answer 2

If you are prior to 4.2 and are using so called voters (you are if you use annotations like @hasRole etc) then you need to define below beans in the context:

@Bean
public DefaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler defaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler() {
    DefaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler defaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler = new DefaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler();
    defaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler.setDefaultRolePrefix("");
    return defaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler;
}

@Bean
public DefaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler defaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler() {
    DefaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler defaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler = new DefaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler();
    defaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler.setDefaultRolePrefix("");
    return defaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler;
}

These beans are used to create evaluation context for spell expressions and they have a defaultRolePrefix set to 'ROLE_'. Although it depends on your use case. This one worked for me and above didn't.

EDIT: answering question about xml configuration -> of course it can be done in xml. Everything done in java config can be written in xml configuration. Here is example (although I did not test it so there might be a typo or something):

<bean id="defaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler" class="org.springframework.security.web.access.expression.DefaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler">
        <property name="defaultRolePrefix" value=""></property>
</bean>

<bean id="defaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler" class="org.springframework.security.access.expression.method.DefaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler">
        <property name="defaultRolePrefix" value=""></property>
</bean>

Answer 3

The following configuration works for me.

@Override
public void configure(WebSecurity web) throws Exception {
    web.expressionHandler(new DefaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler() {
        @Override
        protected SecurityExpressionOperations createSecurityExpressionRoot(Authentication authentication, FilterInvocation fi) {
            WebSecurityExpressionRoot root = (WebSecurityExpressionRoot) super.createSecurityExpressionRoot(authentication, fi);
            root.setDefaultRolePrefix(""); //remove the prefix ROLE_
            return root;
        }
    });
}

Answer 4

It appears the new GrantedAuthorityDefaults will change the prefix for the DefaultWebSecurityExpressionHandler and the DefaultMethodSecurityExpressionHandler, but it doesn't modify the RoleVoter.rolePrefix that is setup from @EnableGlobalMethodSecurity.

The RoleVoter.rolePrefix is what is used for @Secured("ADMIN") style of method security.

So along with the GrantedAuthorityDefaults, I had to also add this CustomGlobalMethodSecurity class to override the defaults for RoleVoter.

@Configuration
@EnableGlobalMethodSecurity(securedEnabled = true)
public class CustomGlobalMethodSecurity extends GlobalMethodSecurityConfiguration {

    protected AccessDecisionManager accessDecisionManager() {
        AffirmativeBased accessDecisionManager = (AffirmativeBased) super.accessDecisionManager();

        //Remove the ROLE_ prefix from RoleVoter for @Secured and hasRole checks on methods
        accessDecisionManager.getDecisionVoters().stream()
                .filter(RoleVoter.class::isInstance)
                .map(RoleVoter.class::cast)
                .forEach(it -> it.setRolePrefix(""));

        return accessDecisionManager;
    }
}