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Because Resteasy is deployed as a servlet, you must use standard web.xml constraints to enable authentication and authorization.
Unfortunately, web.xml constraints do not mesh very well with JAX-RS in some situations. The problem is that web.xml URL pattern matching is very very limited. URL patterns in web.xml only support simple wildcards, so JAX-RS resources like:
/{pathparam1}/foo/bar/{pathparam2}
Cannot be mapped as a web.xml URL pattern like:
/*/foo/bar/*
To get around this problem you will need to use the security annotations defined below on your JAX-RS methods. You will still need to set up some general security constraint elements in web.xml to turn on authentication.
Resteasy JAX-RS supports the @RolesAllowed, @PermitAll and @DenyAll annotations on JAX-RS methods. By default though, Resteasy does not recognize these annotations. You have to configure Resteasy to turn on role-based security by setting a context parameter. NOTE!!! Do not turn on this switch if you are using EJBs. The EJB container will provide this functionality instead of Resteasy.
<web-app> ... <context-param> <param-name>resteasy.role.based.security</param-name> <param-value>true</param-value> </context-param> </web-app>
There is a bit of quirkiness with this approach. You will have to declare all roles used within the Resteasy JAX-RS war file that you are using in your JAX-RS classes and set up a security constraint that permits all of these roles access to every URL handled by the JAX-RS runtime. You'll just have to trust that Resteasy JAX-RS authorizes properly.
How does Resteasy do authorization? Well, its really simple. It just sees if a method is annotated with @RolesAllowed and then just does HttpServletRequest.isUserInRole. If one of the @RolesAllowed passes, then allow the request, otherwise, a response is sent back with a 401 (Unauthorized) response code.
So, here's an example of a modified RESTEasy WAR file. You'll notice that every role declared is allowed access to every URL controlled by the Resteasy servlet.
<web-app> <context-param> <param-name>resteasy.role.based.security</param-name> <param-value>true</param-value> </context-param> <listener> <listener-class>org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.ResteasyBootstrap</listener-class> </listener> <servlet> <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name> <servlet-class>org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher</servlet-class> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> <security-constraint> <web-resource-collection> <web-resource-name>Resteasy</web-resource-name> <url-pattern>/security</url-pattern> </web-resource-collection> <auth-constraint> <role-name>admin</role-name> <role-name>user</role-name> </auth-constraint> </security-constraint> <login-config> <auth-method>BASIC</auth-method> <realm-name>Test</realm-name> </login-config> <security-role> <role-name>admin</role-name> </security-role> <security-role> <role-name>user</role-name> </security-role> </web-app>