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Testing Method Security

This section demonstrates how to use Spring Security’s Test support to test method based security. We first introduce a MessageService that requires the user to be authenticated in order to access it.

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Kotlin

public class HelloMessageService implements MessageService {

	@PreAuthorize("authenticated")
	public String getMessage() {
		Authentication authentication = SecurityContextHolder.getContext()
			.getAuthentication();
		return "Hello " + authentication;
	}
}

class HelloMessageService : MessageService {
    @PreAuthorize("authenticated")
    fun getMessage(): String {
        val authentication: Authentication = SecurityContextHolder.getContext().authentication
        return "Hello $authentication"
    }
}

The result of getMessage is a String saying "Hello" to the current Spring Security Authentication. An example of the output is displayed below.

Hello org.springframework.security.authentication.UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken@ca25360: Principal: org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.User@36ebcb: Username: user; Password: [PROTECTED]; Enabled: true; AccountNonExpired: true; credentialsNonExpired: true; AccountNonLocked: true; Granted Authorities: ROLE_USER; Credentials: [PROTECTED]; Authenticated: true; Details: null; Granted Authorities: ROLE_USER

Security Test Setup

Before we can use Spring Security Test support, we must perform some setup. An example can be seen below:

Java
Kotlin

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class) (1)
@ContextConfiguration (2)
public class WithMockUserTests {

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@ContextConfiguration
class WithMockUserTests {

This is a basic example of how to setup Spring Security Test. The highlights are:

1	`@ExtendWith` instructs the spring-test module that it should create an `ApplicationContext`. For additional information, refer to the Spring reference.
2	`@ContextConfiguration` instructs the spring-test the configuration to use to create the `ApplicationContext`. Since no configuration is specified, the default configuration locations will be tried. This is no different than using the existing Spring Test support. For additional information, refer to the Spring Reference

Spring Security hooks into Spring Test support using the WithSecurityContextTestExecutionListener which will ensure our tests are ran with the correct user. It does this by populating the SecurityContextHolder prior to running our tests. If you are using reactive method security, you will also need ReactorContextTestExecutionListener which populates ReactiveSecurityContextHolder. After the test is done, it will clear out the SecurityContextHolder. If you only need Spring Security related support, you can replace @ContextConfiguration with @SecurityTestExecutionListeners.

Remember we added the @PreAuthorize annotation to our HelloMessageService and so it requires an authenticated user to invoke it. If we ran the following test, we would expect the following test will pass:

Java
Kotlin

@Test(expected = AuthenticationCredentialsNotFoundException.class)
public void getMessageUnauthenticated() {
	messageService.getMessage();
}

@Test(expected = AuthenticationCredentialsNotFoundException::class)
fun getMessageUnauthenticated() {
    messageService.getMessage()
}

@WithMockUser

The question is "How could we most easily run the test as a specific user?" The answer is to use @WithMockUser. The following test will be run as a user with the username "user", the password "password", and the roles "ROLE_USER".

Java
Kotlin

@Test
@WithMockUser
public void getMessageWithMockUser() {
String message = messageService.getMessage();
...
}

@Test
@WithMockUser
fun getMessageWithMockUser() {
    val message: String = messageService.getMessage()
    // ...
}

Specifically the following is true:

The user with the username "user" does not have to exist since we are mocking the user
The Authentication that is populated in the SecurityContext is of type UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken
The principal on the Authentication is Spring Security’s User object
The User will have the username of "user", the password "password", and a single GrantedAuthority named "ROLE_USER" is used.

Our example is nice because we are able to leverage a lot of defaults. What if we wanted to run the test with a different username? The following test would run with the username "customUser". Again, the user does not need to actually exist.

Java
Kotlin

@Test
@WithMockUser("customUsername")
public void getMessageWithMockUserCustomUsername() {
	String message = messageService.getMessage();
...
}

@Test
@WithMockUser("customUsername")
fun getMessageWithMockUserCustomUsername() {
    val message: String = messageService.getMessage()
    // ...
}

We can also easily customize the roles. For example, this test will be invoked with the username "admin" and the roles "ROLE_USER" and "ROLE_ADMIN".

Java
Kotlin

@Test
@WithMockUser(username="admin",roles={"USER","ADMIN"})
public void getMessageWithMockUserCustomUser() {
	String message = messageService.getMessage();
	...
}

@Test
@WithMockUser(username="admin",roles=["USER","ADMIN"])
fun getMessageWithMockUserCustomUser() {
    val message: String = messageService.getMessage()
    // ...
}

If we do not want the value to automatically be prefixed with ROLE_ we can leverage the authorities attribute. For example, this test will be invoked with the username "admin" and the authorities "USER" and "ADMIN".

Java
Kotlin

@Test
@WithMockUser(username = "admin", authorities = { "ADMIN", "USER" })
public void getMessageWithMockUserCustomAuthorities() {
	String message = messageService.getMessage();
	...
}

@Test
@WithMockUser(username = "admin", authorities = ["ADMIN", "USER"])
fun getMessageWithMockUserCustomUsername() {
    val message: String = messageService.getMessage()
    // ...
}

Of course it can be a bit tedious placing the annotation on every test method. Instead, we can place the annotation at the class level and every test will use the specified user. For example, the following would run every test with a user with the username "admin", the password "password", and the roles "ROLE_USER" and "ROLE_ADMIN".

Java
Kotlin

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@WithMockUser(username="admin",roles={"USER","ADMIN"})
public class WithMockUserTests {

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@WithMockUser(username="admin",roles=["USER","ADMIN"])
class WithMockUserTests {

If you are using JUnit 5’s @Nested test support, you can also place the annotation on the enclosing class to apply to all nested classes. For example, the following would run every test with a user with the username "admin", the password "password", and the roles "ROLE_USER" and "ROLE_ADMIN" for both test methods.

Java
Kotlin

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@WithMockUser(username="admin",roles={"USER","ADMIN"})
public class WithMockUserTests {

	@Nested
	public class TestSuite1 {
		// ... all test methods use admin user
	}

	@Nested
	public class TestSuite2 {
		// ... all test methods use admin user
	}
}

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension::class)
@ContextConfiguration
@WithMockUser(username = "admin", roles = ["USER", "ADMIN"])
class WithMockUserTests {
    @Nested
    inner class TestSuite1 { // ... all test methods use admin user
    }

    @Nested
    inner class TestSuite2 { // ... all test methods use admin user
    }
}

By default the SecurityContext is set during the TestExecutionListener.beforeTestMethod event. This is the equivalent of happening before JUnit’s @Before. You can change this to happen during the TestExecutionListener.beforeTestExecution event which is after JUnit’s @Before but before the test method is invoked.

@WithMockUser(setupBefore = TestExecutionEvent.TEST_EXECUTION)

@WithAnonymousUser

Using @WithAnonymousUser allows running as an anonymous user. This is especially convenient when you wish to run most of your tests with a specific user, but want to run a few tests as an anonymous user. For example, the following will run withMockUser1 and withMockUser2 using @WithMockUser and anonymous as an anonymous user.

Java
Kotlin

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@WithMockUser
public class WithUserClassLevelAuthenticationTests {

	@Test
	public void withMockUser1() {
	}

	@Test
	public void withMockUser2() {
	}

	@Test
	@WithAnonymousUser
	public void anonymous() throws Exception {
		// override default to run as anonymous user
	}
}

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@WithMockUser
class WithUserClassLevelAuthenticationTests {
    @Test
    fun withMockUser1() {
    }

    @Test
    fun withMockUser2() {
    }

    @Test
    @WithAnonymousUser
    fun anonymous() {
        // override default to run as anonymous user
    }
}

@WithAnonymousUser(setupBefore = TestExecutionEvent.TEST_EXECUTION)

@WithUserDetails

While @WithMockUser is a very convenient way to get started, it may not work in all instances. For example, it is common for applications to expect that the Authentication principal be of a specific type. This is done so that the application can refer to the principal as the custom type and reduce coupling on Spring Security.

The custom principal is often times returned by a custom UserDetailsService that returns an object that implements both UserDetails and the custom type. For situations like this, it is useful to create the test user using the custom UserDetailsService. That is exactly what @WithUserDetails does.

Assuming we have a UserDetailsService exposed as a bean, the following test will be invoked with an Authentication of type UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken and a principal that is returned from the UserDetailsService with the username of "user".

Java
Kotlin

@Test
@WithUserDetails
public void getMessageWithUserDetails() {
	String message = messageService.getMessage();
	...
}

@Test
@WithUserDetails
fun getMessageWithUserDetails() {
    val message: String = messageService.getMessage()
    // ...
}

We can also customize the username used to lookup the user from our UserDetailsService. For example, this test would be run with a principal that is returned from the UserDetailsService with the username of "customUsername".

Java
Kotlin

@Test
@WithUserDetails("customUsername")
public void getMessageWithUserDetailsCustomUsername() {
	String message = messageService.getMessage();
	...
}

@Test
@WithUserDetails("customUsername")
fun getMessageWithUserDetailsCustomUsername() {
    val message: String = messageService.getMessage()
    // ...
}

We can also provide an explicit bean name to look up the UserDetailsService. For example, this test would look up the username of "customUsername" using the UserDetailsService with the bean name "myUserDetailsService".

Java
Kotlin

@Test
@WithUserDetails(value="customUsername", userDetailsServiceBeanName="myUserDetailsService")
public void getMessageWithUserDetailsServiceBeanName() {
	String message = messageService.getMessage();
	...
}

@Test
@WithUserDetails(value="customUsername", userDetailsServiceBeanName="myUserDetailsService")
fun getMessageWithUserDetailsServiceBeanName() {
    val message: String = messageService.getMessage()
    // ...
}

Like @WithMockUser we can also place our annotation at the class level so that every test uses the same user. However unlike @WithMockUser, @WithUserDetails requires the user to exist.

@WithUserDetails(setupBefore = TestExecutionEvent.TEST_EXECUTION)

@WithSecurityContext

We have seen that @WithMockUser is an excellent choice if we are not using a custom Authentication principal. Next we discovered that @WithUserDetails would allow us to use a custom UserDetailsService to create our Authentication principal but required the user to exist. We will now see an option that allows the most flexibility.

We can create our own annotation that uses the @WithSecurityContext to create any SecurityContext we want. For example, we might create an annotation named @WithMockCustomUser as shown below:

Java
Kotlin

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@WithSecurityContext(factory = WithMockCustomUserSecurityContextFactory.class)
public @interface WithMockCustomUser {

	String username() default "rob";

	String name() default "Rob Winch";
}

@Retention(AnnotationRetention.RUNTIME)
@WithSecurityContext(factory = WithMockCustomUserSecurityContextFactory::class)
annotation class WithMockCustomUser(val username: String = "rob", val name: String = "Rob Winch")

You can see that @WithMockCustomUser is annotated with the @WithSecurityContext annotation. This is what signals to Spring Security Test support that we intend to create a SecurityContext for the test. The @WithSecurityContext annotation requires we specify a SecurityContextFactory that will create a new SecurityContext given our @WithMockCustomUser annotation. You can find our WithMockCustomUserSecurityContextFactory implementation below:

Java
Kotlin

public class WithMockCustomUserSecurityContextFactory
	implements WithSecurityContextFactory<WithMockCustomUser> {
	@Override
	public SecurityContext createSecurityContext(WithMockCustomUser customUser) {
		SecurityContext context = SecurityContextHolder.createEmptyContext();

		CustomUserDetails principal =
			new CustomUserDetails(customUser.name(), customUser.username());
		Authentication auth =
			UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken.authenticated(principal, "password", principal.getAuthorities());
		context.setAuthentication(auth);
		return context;
	}
}

class WithMockCustomUserSecurityContextFactory : WithSecurityContextFactory<WithMockCustomUser> {
    override fun createSecurityContext(customUser: WithMockCustomUser): SecurityContext {
        val context = SecurityContextHolder.createEmptyContext()
        val principal = CustomUserDetails(customUser.name, customUser.username)
        val auth: Authentication =
            UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(principal, "password", principal.authorities)
        context.authentication = auth
        return context
    }
}

We can now annotate a test class or a test method with our new annotation and Spring Security’s WithSecurityContextTestExecutionListener will ensure that our SecurityContext is populated appropriately.

When creating your own WithSecurityContextFactory implementations, it is nice to know that they can be annotated with standard Spring annotations. For example, the WithUserDetailsSecurityContextFactory uses the @Autowired annotation to acquire the UserDetailsService:

Java
Kotlin

final class WithUserDetailsSecurityContextFactory
	implements WithSecurityContextFactory<WithUserDetails> {

	private UserDetailsService userDetailsService;

	@Autowired
	public WithUserDetailsSecurityContextFactory(UserDetailsService userDetailsService) {
		this.userDetailsService = userDetailsService;
	}

	public SecurityContext createSecurityContext(WithUserDetails withUser) {
		String username = withUser.value();
		Assert.hasLength(username, "value() must be non-empty String");
		UserDetails principal = userDetailsService.loadUserByUsername(username);
		Authentication authentication = UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken.authenticated(principal, principal.getPassword(), principal.getAuthorities());
		SecurityContext context = SecurityContextHolder.createEmptyContext();
		context.setAuthentication(authentication);
		return context;
	}
}

class WithUserDetailsSecurityContextFactory @Autowired constructor(private val userDetailsService: UserDetailsService) :
    WithSecurityContextFactory<WithUserDetails> {
    override fun createSecurityContext(withUser: WithUserDetails): SecurityContext {
        val username: String = withUser.value
        Assert.hasLength(username, "value() must be non-empty String")
        val principal = userDetailsService.loadUserByUsername(username)
        val authentication: Authentication =
            UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(principal, principal.password, principal.authorities)
        val context = SecurityContextHolder.createEmptyContext()
        context.authentication = authentication
        return context
    }
}

@WithSecurityContext(setupBefore = TestExecutionEvent.TEST_EXECUTION)

Test Meta Annotations

If you reuse the same user within your tests often, it is not ideal to have to repeatedly specify the attributes. For example, if there are many tests related to an administrative user with the username "admin" and the roles ROLE_USER and ROLE_ADMIN you would have to write:

Java
Kotlin

@WithMockUser(username="admin",roles={"USER","ADMIN"})

@WithMockUser(username="admin",roles=["USER","ADMIN"])

Rather than repeating this everywhere, we can use a meta annotation. For example, we could create a meta annotation named WithMockAdmin:

Java
Kotlin

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@WithMockUser(value="rob",roles="ADMIN")
public @interface WithMockAdmin { }

@Retention(AnnotationRetention.RUNTIME)
@WithMockUser(value = "rob", roles = ["ADMIN"])
annotation class WithMockAdmin

Now we can use @WithMockAdmin in the same way as the more verbose @WithMockUser.

Meta annotations work with any of the testing annotations described above. For example, this means we could create a meta annotation for @WithUserDetails("admin") as well.