Spring security - creating 403 Access denied custom response

Question

I have a Spring Boot app based on REST api with JWT authentication. The problem is I cannot get rid of default 403 Access Denied rest response which looks like this:

{
    "timestamp": 1516206966541,
    "status": 403,
    "error": "Forbidden",
    "message": "Access Denied",
    "path": "/api/items/2"
}

I created custom AccessDeniedHandler:

public class CustomAccessDeniedHandler implements AccessDeniedHandler {

    @Override
    public void handle(HttpServletRequest req,
                       HttpServletResponse res,
                       AccessDeniedException accessDeniedException) throws IOException, ServletException {



        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        res.setContentType("application/json;charset=UTF-8");
        res.setStatus(403);
        res.getWriter().write(mapper.writeValueAsString(new JsonResponse()
                .add("timestamp", System.currentTimeMillis())
                .add("status", 403)
                .add("message", "Access denied")));
    }
}

and added it to the WebConfig class:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurity extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

    private UserDetailsService userDetailsService;
    private BCryptPasswordEncoder bCryptPasswordEncoder;

    @Autowired
    public WebSecurity(UserDetailsService userDetailsService, BCryptPasswordEncoder bCryptPasswordEncoder) {
        this.userDetailsService = userDetailsService;
        this.bCryptPasswordEncoder = bCryptPasswordEncoder;
    }

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http
                .sessionManagement()
                .sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.NEVER)
                .and()
                    .csrf().disable()
                    .authorizeRequests()
                    .antMatchers(HttpMethod.POST, REGISTER_URL).permitAll()
                    .anyRequest().authenticated()
                .and()
                    .exceptionHandling().accessDeniedHandler(accessDeniedHandler())
                .and()
                    .addFilter(new JWTAuthenticationFilter(authenticationManager(), tokenProvider()))
                    .addFilter(new JWTAuthorizationFilter(authenticationManager(), tokenProvider()));

    }

    @Override
    public void configure(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {
        auth.userDetailsService(userDetailsService).passwordEncoder(bCryptPasswordEncoder);
    }

    @Bean
    public TokenProvider tokenProvider(){
        return new TokenProvider();
    }

    @Bean
    public AccessDeniedHandler accessDeniedHandler(){
        return new CustomAccessDeniedHandler();
    }
}

Despite this I'm still getting the default Access Denied response. When debugging I realized that the handle method from custom handler isn't even called. What is the case here?

Answer 1

I think I resolved the problem. Instead of creating an implementation of AccessDeniedHandler I had to create a custom AuthenticationEntryPoint and set it in exception handling.

WebConfig now looks like this:

@EnableWebSecurity
public class WebSecurity extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

    private UserDetailsService userDetailsService;
    private BCryptPasswordEncoder bCryptPasswordEncoder;

    @Autowired
    public WebSecurity(UserDetailsService userDetailsService, BCryptPasswordEncoder bCryptPasswordEncoder) {
        this.userDetailsService = userDetailsService;
        this.bCryptPasswordEncoder = bCryptPasswordEncoder;
    }

    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http
                .sessionManagement().sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.STATELESS)
                .and()
                    .csrf().disable()
                    .authorizeRequests()
                    .antMatchers(HttpMethod.POST, REGISTER_URL).permitAll()
                    .anyRequest().authenticated()
                .and()
                    .exceptionHandling().authenticationEntryPoint(authenticationEntryPoint())
                .and()
                    .addFilter(new JWTAuthenticationFilter(authenticationManager(), tokenProvider()))
                    .addFilter(new JWTAuthorizationFilter(authenticationManager(), tokenProvider()));

    }

    @Override
    public void configure(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) throws Exception {
        auth.userDetailsService(userDetailsService).passwordEncoder(bCryptPasswordEncoder);
    }

    @Bean
    public TokenProvider tokenProvider(){
        return new TokenProvider();
    }

    @Bean
    public AuthenticationEntryPoint authenticationEntryPoint(){
        return new CustomAuthenticationEntryPoint();
    }
}

and the CustomAuthenticationEntryPoint:

public class CustomAuthenticationEntryPoint implements AuthenticationEntryPoint {

    @Override
    public void commence(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res, AuthenticationException authException) throws IOException, ServletException {
        res.setContentType("application/json;charset=UTF-8");
        res.setStatus(403);
        res.getWriter().write(JsonBuilder //my util class for creating json strings
                .put("timestamp", DateGenerator.getDate())
                .put("status", 403)
                .put("message", "Access denied")
                .build());
    }
}

Now everything works as I wanted.