The play-pac4j
project is an easy and powerful security library for Play framework v2 web applications which supports authentication and authorization, but also application logout and advanced features like session fixation and CSRF protection.
It's based on Play 2 and on the pac4j security engine. It's available under the Apache 2 license.
Several versions of the library are available for the different versions of the Play framework:
Play version | pac4j version | play-pac4j version |
---|---|---|
2.0 | 1.7 | play-pac4j_java 1.1.x (Java) / play-pac4j_scala2.9 1.1.x (Scala) |
2.1 | 1.7 | play-pac4j_java 1.1.x (Java) / play-pac4j_scala2.10 1.1.x (Scala) |
2.2 | 1.7 | play-pac4j_java 1.2.x (Java) / play-pac4j_scala 1.2.x (Scala) |
2.3 | 1.7 | play-pac4j_java 1.4.x (Java) / play-pac4j_scala2.10 and play-pac4j_scala2.11 1.4.x (Scala) |
2.5 | 1.8 | 2.2.x |
2.4 | 1.9 | 2.3.x |
2.5 | 1.9 | 2.4.x |
Main concepts and components:
-
A client represents an authentication mechanism (CAS, OAuth, SAML, OpenID Connect, LDAP, JWT...) It performs the login process and returns a user profile. An indirect client is for UI authentication while a direct client is for web services authentication
-
An authorizer is meant to check authorizations on the authenticated user profile(s) (role / permission, ...) or on the current web context (IP check, CSRF...)
-
A config defines the security configuration via clients and authorizers
-
The
Secure
annotation / function or theSecurityFilter
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 -
The
CallbackController
finishes the login process for an indirect client -
The
ApplicationLogoutController
logs out the user from the application.
Just follow these easy steps to secure your Play 2 web application:
You need to add a dependency on:
- the
play-pac4j
library (groupId: org.pac4j, version: 2.4.0-SNAPSHOT) - the appropriate
pac4j
submodules (groupId: org.pac4j, version: 1.9.0):pac4j-oauth
for OAuth support (Facebook, Twitter...),pac4j-cas
for CAS support,pac4j-ldap
for LDAP authentication, etc.
All released artifacts are available in the Maven central repository.
The configuration (org.pac4j.core.config.Config
) contains all the clients and authorizers required by the application to handle security.
The Config
is bound for injection in a SecurityModule
(or whatever the name you call it):
In Java:
public class SecurityModule extends AbstractModule {
@Override
protected void configure() {
FacebookClient facebookClient = new FacebookClient("fbId", "fbSecret");
TwitterClient twitterClient = new TwitterClient("twId", "twSecret");
FormClient formClient = new FormClient(baseUrl + "/loginForm", new SimpleTestUsernamePasswordAuthenticator());
IndirectBasicAuthClient basicAuthClient = new IndirectBasicAuthClient(new SimpleTestUsernamePasswordAuthenticator());
CasClient casClient = new CasClient("https://mycasserver/login");
SAML2ClientConfiguration cfg = new SAML2ClientConfiguration("resource:samlKeystore.jks",
"pac4j-demo-passwd", "pac4j-demo-passwd", "resource:openidp-feide.xml");
cfg.setMaximumAuthenticationLifetime(3600);
cfg.setServiceProviderEntityId("urn:mace:saml:pac4j.org");
cfg.setServiceProviderMetadataPath(new File("target", "sp-metadata.xml").getAbsolutePath());
SAML2Client saml2Client = new SAML2Client(cfg);
OidcClient oidcClient = new OidcClient();
oidcClient.setClientID("id");
oidcClient.setSecret("secret");
oidcClient.setDiscoveryURI("https://accounts.google.com/.well-known/openid-configuration");
oidcClient.addCustomParam("prompt", "consent");
ParameterClient parameterClient = new ParameterClient("token", new JwtAuthenticator("salt"));
Clients clients = new Clients("https://localhost:9000/callback", facebookClient, twitterClient, formClient,
basicAuthClient, casClient, saml2Client, oidcClient, parameterClient);
Config config = new Config(clients);
config.addAuthorizer("admin", new RequireAnyRoleAuthorizer<>("ROLE_ADMIN"));
config.addAuthorizer("custom", new CustomAuthorizer());
config.setHttpActionAdapter(new DemoHttpActionAdapter());
bind(Config.class).toInstance(config);
}
}
In Scala:
class SecurityModule(environment: Environment, configuration: Configuration) extends AbstractModule {
override def configure(): Unit = {
val facebookClient = new FacebookClient("fbId", "fbSecret")
val twitterClient = new TwitterClient("twId", "twSecret")
val formClient = new FormClient(baseUrl + "/loginForm", new SimpleTestUsernamePasswordAuthenticator())
val basicAuthClient = new IndirectBasicAuthClient(new SimpleTestUsernamePasswordAuthenticator())
val casClient = new CasClient("https://mycasserver/login")
val cfg = new SAML2ClientConfiguration("resource:samlKeystore.jks", "pac4j-demo-passwd", "pac4j-demo-passwd", "resource:openidp-feide.xml")
cfg.setMaximumAuthenticationLifetime(3600)
cfg.setServiceProviderEntityId("urn:mace:saml:pac4j.org")
cfg.setServiceProviderMetadataPath(new File("target", "sp-metadata.xml").getAbsolutePath())
val saml2Client = new SAML2Client(cfg)
val oidcClient = new OidcClient()
oidcClient.setClientID("id")
oidcClient.setSecret("secret")
oidcClient.setDiscoveryURI("https://accounts.google.com/.well-known/openid-configuration")
oidcClient.addCustomParam("prompt", "consent")
val parameterClient = new ParameterClient("token", new JwtAuthenticator("salt"))
val clients = new Clients("https://localhost:9000/callback", facebookClient, twitterClient, formClient,
basicAuthClient, casClient, saml2Client, oidcClient, parameterClient)
val config = new Config(clients)
config.addAuthorizer("admin", new RequireAnyRoleAuthorizer[Nothing]("ROLE_ADMIN"))
config.addAuthorizer("custom", new CustomAuthorizer())
config.setHttpActionAdapter(new DemoHttpActionAdapter())
bind(classOf[Config]).toInstance(config)
}
}
https://localhost:8080/callback
is the url of the callback endpoint, which is only necessary for indirect clients.
Notice that you define:
-
an optional
SessionStore
using thesetSessionStore(sessionStore)
method (by default, thePlayCacheStore
uses the Play cache to store pac4j data) -
a specific
HttpActionAdapter
to handle specific HTTP actions (like redirections, forbidden / unauthorized pages) via thesetHttpActionAdapter
method. The available implementation is theDefaultHttpActionAdapter
, but you can subclass it to define your own HTTP 401 / 403 error pages for example.
You can protect (authentication + authorizations) the urls of your Play application by using the Secure
annotation / function. It has the following behaviour:
-
First, if the user is not authenticated (no profile) and if some clients have been defined in the
clients
parameter, a login is tried for the direct clients. -
Then, if the user has a profile, authorizations are checked according to the
authorizers
configuration. If the authorizations are valid, the user is granted access. Otherwise, a 403 error page is displayed. -
Finally, if the user is still not authenticated (no profile), he is redirected to the appropriate identity provider if the first defined client is an indirect one in the
clients
configuration. Otherwise, a 401 error page is displayed.
The following parameters are available:
clients
(optional): the list of client names (separated by commas) used for authentication:
- in all cases, this filter requires the user to be authenticated. Thus, if the
clients
is blank or not defined, the user must have been previously authenticated - if the
client_name
request parameter is provided, only this client (if it exists in theclients
) is selected.
authorizers
(optional): the list of authorizer names (separated by commas) used to check authorizations:
- if the
authorizers
is blank or not defined, no authorization is checked - the following authorizers are available by default (without defining them in the configuration):
isFullyAuthenticated
to check if the user is authenticated but not remembered,isRemembered
for a remembered user,isAnonymous
to ensure the user is not authenticated,isAuthenticated
to ensure the user is authenticated (not necessary by default unless you use theAnonymousClient
)hsts
to use theStrictTransportSecurityHeader
authorizer,nosniff
forXContentTypeOptionsHeader
,noframe
forXFrameOptionsHeader
,xssprotection
forXSSProtectionHeader
,nocache
forCacheControlHeader
orsecurityHeaders
for the five previous authorizerscsrfToken
to use theCsrfTokenGeneratorAuthorizer
with theDefaultCsrfTokenGenerator
(it generates a CSRF token and saves it as thepac4jCsrfToken
request attribute and in thepac4jCsrfToken
cookie),csrfCheck
to check that this previous token has been sent as thepac4jCsrfToken
header or parameter in a POST request andcsrf
to use both previous authorizers.
multiProfile
(optional): it indicates whether multiple authentications (and thus multiple profiles) must be kept at the same time (false
by default).
For example in your controllers:
In Java:
@Secure(clients = "FacebookClient")
public Result facebookIndex() {
return protectedIndexView();
}
In Scala:
def facebookIndex = Secure("FacebookClient") { profiles =>
Action { request =>
Ok(views.html.protectedIndex(profiles))
}
}
In order to protect multiple urls at the same tine, you can configure the SecurityFilter
. You need to configure your application to include the SecurityFilter
as follows:
First define a Filters
class in your application (if you have not yet done so).
In Java:
package filters;
import org.pac4j.play.filters.SecurityFilter;
import play.http.HttpFilters;
import play.api.mvc.EssentialFilter;
import javax.inject.Inject;
public class Filters implements HttpFilters {
private final SecurityFilter securityFilter;
@Inject
public Filters(SecurityFilter securityFilter) {
this.securityFilter = securityFilter;
}
@Override
public EssentialFilter[] filters() {
return new EssentialFilter[] {securityFilter};
}
}
In Scala:
package filters
import javax.inject.Inject
import org.pac4j.play.filters.SecurityFilter
import play.api.http.HttpFilters
/**
* Configuration of all the Play filters that are used in the application.
*/
class Filters @Inject()(securityFilter: SecurityFilter) extends HttpFilters {
def filters = Seq(securityFilter)
}
Then tell your application to use the filters in application.conf
:
play.http.filters = "filters.Filters"
See for more information on the use of filters in Play the Play documentation on Filters.
Rules for the security filter can be supplied in application.conf. An example is shown below. It consists of a list of filter rules, where the key is a regular expression that will be used to match the url. Make sure that the / is escaped by \ to make a valid regular expression.
For each regex key, there are two subkeys: authorizers
and clients
. Here you can define the
correct values, like you would supply to the RequireAuthentication
method in controllers. There
two exceptions: authorizers
can have two special values: _authenticated_
and _anonymous_
.
_anonymous_
will disable authentication and authorization for urls matching the regex.
_authenticated_
will require authentication, but will set clients and authorizers both to null
.
Rules are applied top to bottom. The first matching rule will define which clients and authorizers
are used. When not provided, the value will be null
.
pac4j.security.rules = [
# Admin pages need a special authorizer and do not support login via Twitter.
{"/admin/.*" = {
authorizers = "admin"
clients = "FormClient"
}}
# Rules for the REST services. These don't specify a client and will return 401
# when not authenticated.
{"/restservices/.*" = {
authorizers = "_authenticated_"
}}
# The login page needs to be publicly accessible.
{"/login.html" = {
authorizers = "_anonymous_"
}}
# 'Catch all' rule to make sure the whole application stays secure.
{".*" = {
authorizers = "_authenticated_"
clients = "FormClient,TwitterClient"
}}
]
For indirect clients (like Facebook), the user is redirected to an external identity provider for login and then back to the application.
Thus, a callback endpoint is required in the application. It is managed by the CallbackController
which has the following behaviour:
-
the credentials are extracted from the current request to fetch the user profile (from the identity provider) which is then saved in the web session
-
finally, the user is redirected back to the originally requested url (or to the
defaultUrl
).
The following parameters are available:
-
defaultUrl
(optional): it's the default url after login if no url was originally requested (/
by default) -
multiProfile
(optional): it indicates whether multiple authentications (and thus multiple profiles) must be kept at the same time (false
by default).
In the routes
file:
GET /callback @org.pac4j.play.CallbackController.callback()
In the SecurityModule
:
In Java:
CallbackController callbackController = new CallbackController();
callbackController.setDefaultUrl("/");
bind(CallbackController.class).toInstance(callbackController);
In Scala:
val callbackController = new CallbackController()
callbackController.setDefaultUrl("/")
bind(classOf[CallbackController]).toInstance(callbackController)
You can get the profile of the authenticated user using profileManager.get(true)
(false
not to use the session, but only the current HTTP request).
You can test if the user is authenticated using profileManager.isAuthenticated()
.
You can get all the profiles of the authenticated user (if ever multiple ones are kept) using profileManager.getAll(true)
.
Examples:
In Java:
PlayWebContext context = new PlayWebContext(ctx());
ProfileManager<CommonProfile> profileManager = new ProfileManager(context);
Optional<CommonProfile> profile = profileManager.get(true);
In Scala:
val webContext = new PlayWebContext(request)
val profileManager = new ProfileManager[CommonProfile](webContext)
val profile = profileManager.get(true)
The retrieved profile is at least a CommonProfile
, from which you can retrieve the most common attributes that all profiles share. But you can also cast the user profile to the appropriate profile according to the provider used for authentication. For example, after a Facebook authentication:
In Java:
FacebookProfile facebookProfile = (FacebookProfile) commonProfile;
In Scala:
val facebookProfile = commonProfile.asInstanceOf[FacebookProfile]
You can log out the current authenticated user using the ApplicationLogoutController
. It has the following behaviour:
-
after logout, the user is redirected to the url defined by the
url
request parameter if it matches thelogoutUrlPattern
-
or the user is redirected to the
defaultUrl
if it is defined -
otherwise, a blank page is displayed.
The following parameters are available:
-
defaultUrl
(optional): the default logout url if nourl
request parameter is provided or if theurl
does not match thelogoutUrlPattern
(not defined by default) -
logoutUrlPattern
(optional): the logout url pattern that theurl
parameter must match (only relative urls are allowed by default).
In the routes
file:
GET /logout @org.pac4j.play.ApplicationLogoutController.logout()
In the SecurityModule
:
In Java:
ApplicationLogoutController logoutController = new ApplicationLogoutController();
logoutController.setDefaultUrl("/");
bind(ApplicationLogoutController.class).toInstance(logoutController);
In Scala:
val logoutController = new ApplicationLogoutController()
logoutController.setDefaultUrl("/")
bind(classOf[ApplicationLogoutController]).toInstance(logoutController)
The RequiresAuthentication
annotation and function have been renamed as Secure
with the clients
and authorizers
parameters (instead of clientName
and authorizerName
).
The UserProfileController
class and the getUserProfile
method in the Security
trait no longer exist and the ProfileManager
must be used instead.
The ApplicationLogoutController
behaviour has slightly changed: even without any url
request parameter, the user will be redirected to the defaultUrl
if it has been defined
The separate Scala and Java projects have been merged. You need to change the dependency play-pac4j-java
or play-pac4j-scala
to simply play-pac4j
.
The getUserProfile
method of the Security
trait returns a Option[CommonProfile]
instead of just a UserProfile
.
The DataStore
concept is replaced by the pac4j SessionStore
concept. The PlayCacheStore
does no longer need to be bound in the security module. A new session store could be defined using the config.setSessionStore
method.
The DefaultHttpActionAdapter
does not need to be bound in the security module, but must to be set using the config.setHttpActionAdapter
method.
play-pac4j v2.0
is a huge refactoring of the previous version 1.5. It takes advantage of the new features of pac4j
v1.8 (REST support, authorizations, configuration objects...) and is fully based on dependency injection -> see Play 2.4 migration guide.
In Java, the SecurityController
and JavaController
are deprecated and you need to use the UserProfileController
to get the user profile (you can also use the ProfileManager
object directly).
The "target url" concept has disappeared as it was too complicated, it could be simulated though.
The SecurityCallbackController
is deprecated and you must use the CallbackController
. The logout support has been moved to the ApplicationLogoutController
.
The JavaWebContext
and ScalaWebContext
have been merged into a new PlayWebContext
.
The StorageHelper
has been removed, replaced by the PlayCacheStore
implementation where you can set the timeouts. You can provide your own implementation of the CacheStore
if necessary.
The PlayLogoutHandler
has been moved to the org.pac4j.play.cas.logout
package and renamed as PlayCacheLogoutHandler
(it relies on the Play Cache).
The static specific Config
has been replaced by the default org.pac4j.core.config.Config
object to define the clients (authentication) and the authorizers (authorizations).
Custom 401 / 403 HTTP error pages must now be defined by overriding the DefaultHttpActionAdapter
.
The isAjax
parameter is no longer available as AJAX requests are now automatically detected. The stateless
parameter is no longer available as the stateless nature is held by the client itself.
The requireAnyRole
and requieAllRoles
parameters are no longer available and authorizers must be used instead (with the authorizerName
parameter).
Two demo webapps: play-pac4j-java-demo & play-pac4j-scala-demo are available for tests and implement many authentication mechanisms: Facebook, Twitter, form, basic auth, CAS, SAML, OpenID Connect, JWT...
Test them online: https://play-pac4j-java-demo.herokuapp.com and https://play-pac4j-scala-demo.herokuapp.com.
See the release notes. Learn more by browsing the play-pac4j Javadoc and the pac4j Javadoc.
If you have any question, please use the following mailing lists:
The version 2.4.0-SNAPSHOT is under development.
Maven artifacts are built via Travis: and available in the Sonatype snapshots repository. This repository must be added in the
resolvers
of your build.sbt
file:
resolvers ++= Seq(Resolver.mavenLocal, "Sonatype snapshots repository" at "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/")