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>

   <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>