Spring Security: enable / disable CSRF by client type (browser / non-browser )

Question

Spring Security documentation says:

"When you use CSRF protection? Our recommendation is to use CSRF protection for any request that could be processed by a browser by normal users. If you are only creating a service that is used by non-browser clients, you will likely want to disable CSRF protection."

What if my service is going to be used by both "browser" and "non-browser" clients such as third party external services, does Spring Security provide a way to disable CSRF exclusively for certain type of clients?

Answer 1

I am sure there is a way to do this in Spring Security XML, but since I am using Java Config, here is my solution.

 @Configuration
 @EnableWebSecurity
 public class SecurityConfig {

    @Configuration
    @Order(1)
    public static class SoapApiConfigurationAdapter extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
        protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
            http
                .antMatcher("/soap/**")
                .csrf().disable()
                .httpBasic();
        }
    }


    @Configuration
    public static class WebApiConfigurationAdapter extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

        protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
            http        
                .formLogin()
                    .loginProcessingUrl("/authentication")
                    .usernameParameter("j_username")
                    .passwordParameter("j_password").permitAll()
                    .and()
                .csrf().disable()

        }
     }
}