Spring Rest authentication

Question

I developed a Rest API (A) that returns some results by making calls to another API (B). The (B) API needs an authentication so in my properties file i defined the username and the password that I inject in my RestTemplate to make it work.

What I want to do : Add a basic authentication system to my API (A) so that a user can input his username and password, and use these credentials in the RestTemplate to call API (B). Thanks

Answer 1

You have two options here. You can use Spring basic authentication filter:

Sample code:

<bean id="basicAuthenticationFilter"
  class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.www.BasicAuthenticationFilter">
  <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager"/>
  <property name="authenticationEntryPoint" ref="authenticationEntryPoint"/>
</bean>

<bean id="authenticationEntryPoint"
  class="org.springframework.security.web.authentication.www.BasicAuthenticationEntryPoint">
  <property name="realmName" value="Name Of Your Realm"/>
</bean>

Or you could use Spring Security that's a Framework designed just to add the security layer to your web application. This is a complete tutorial that explains how to use it to add Basic Authentication to your Rest API:

http://websystique.com/spring-security/secure-spring-rest-api-using-basic-authentication/

Personal opinion, i would use Spring Security.