On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, John Gregg wrote:
> Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 10:44:15 -0500
> From: John Gregg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: Tomcat Users List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: front controller pattern and security
>
> Hi all.
>
> I've been thinking about how the j2ee front controller pattern (used by
> Struts et al.) does/does not take advantage of url-based authorization
> constraints in web.xml. I want to avoid having to check roles in my own
> code as much as possible. At first I thought I could declare a URL like
> /somewebapp/somerole/* to require the "somerole" role before being allowed
> access to my controller servlet. Another URL would be
> /somewebapp/someotherrole/* but would map to the same servlet. That servlet
> would then pick off the action at the end of the URL and execute it.
> However, while I can restrict access to the servlet, or whatever other
> "physical" resource I'm trying to protect, what I really want to protect is
> the action that's executed. Am I just stuck with enumerating all possible
> actions in by web.xml (/somewebapp/somerole/someaction,
> /somewebapp/somerole/someotheraction, etc.)? Should I instead make a filter
> that enforces this for me? I'm facing the same problem with Apache SOAP's
> rpcrouter.
>
A Filter would be a good solution if you are running on a Servlet 2.3
based platform (like Tomcat 4).
Another approach is to see if your controller framework can help you out
-- for example, Struts 1.1 lets you define the roles that are allowed to
access a particular Action with the "roles" attribute on your <action>
element. The simplest way to use this is to create a security constraint
against URL pattern "*.do" that just forces the login, and then use the
role restrictions on the actions to define which actions can be executed
by which logged-in user.
> thanks
>
> john
>
Craig
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