Spring Security configuration: HTTP 403 error

Question

I'm trying to secure my website using Spring Security following the guides on the web.

So on my server side I have the following classes.

My WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter implements ApplicationContextAware {

    @Override
    protected void registerAuthentication(AuthenticationManagerBuilde rauthManagerBuilder) throws Exception {
        authManagerBuilder.inMemoryAuthentication().withUser("user").password("password").roles("ADMIN");
    }
}

My controller:

@Controller
//@RequestMapping("/course")
public class CourseController implements ApplicationContextAware {

    @RequestMapping(value="/course", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces="application/json")
    public @ResponseBody List<Course> get(  // The criterion used to find.
        @RequestParam(value = "what", required = true) String what,
        @RequestParam(value = "value", required = true) String value) {
        //.....
    }

    @RequestMapping(value = "/course", method = RequestMethod.POST, produces = "application/json")
    public List<Course> upload(@RequestBody Course[] cs) {
        
    }
}

What confused me very much is the server does not respond to the POST/DELETE method, while the GET method works fine. BTW, I'm using RestTemplate on the client side.

Exceptions are:

Exception in thread "main" org.springframework.web.client.HttpClientErrorException: 403 Forbidden
    at org.springframework.web.client.DefaultResponseErrorHandler.handleError(DefaultResponseErrorHandler.java:91)
    at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.handleResponseError(RestTemplate.java:574)
    at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.doExecute(RestTemplate.java:530)
    at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.execute(RestTemplate.java:487)
    at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.delete(RestTemplate.java:385)
    at hello.Application.createRestTemplate(Application.java:149)
    at hello.Application.main(Application.java:99)

I've searched the internet for days. Still don't have a clue. Please help. Thanks so much

Answer 1

The issue is likely due to CSRF protection. If users will not be using your application in a web browser, then it is safe to disable CSRF protection. Otherwise you should ensure to include the CSRF token in the request.

To disable CSRF protection you can use the following:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurityConfig
    extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter implements ApplicationContextAware {

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http
            // ...
            .csrf().disable();
    }

    @Override
    protected void registerAuthentication(AuthenticationManagerBuilder authManagerBuilder) throws Exception {
        authManagerBuilder
            .inMemoryAuthentication()
                .withUser("user").password("password").roles("ADMIN");
    }
}