19.6. Studio: TechJobs Authentication

For this studio, you’ll be tasked with adding simple user authentication to your techjobs application. The steps to do this will match what you have already done in coding-events. You should refer back to the tutorial starting here.

  1. Create the User Model
  2. Create the Login and Registration Forms
  3. Filter Requests

19.6.1. The Starter Code

  1. Fork and clone the starter code for TechJobs (Auth Edition).

  2. The dependencies for the database connection and hashing function are already added for you in build.gradle. You will need to do some work to ensure that the schema, user, and database password match your own local MySQL setup.

    1. Open application.properties and view the first three statements:

      # Database connection settings
      spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/techjobs_auth
      spring.datasource.username=techjobs_auth
      spring.datasource.password=auth
      
    2. You likely do not already have a schema named techjobs_auth or this combination of username and password so you must create them.

      Tip

      To create a new schema in your current connection, refer back to the instructions in SQL Part 1 Exercises.

      To create a new user with permissions, refresh your memory in Setting up a Persistent Database - Video.

Note

We’ve greatly reduced the functionality of the app so you can focus on the work to set up authentication. Running the application now gives you a familiar-looking navbar with two menu options, Add Jobs and Logout. You can add jobs right away and an astute observer of the starter code and schema tables will notice that the fields on Job are only strings, not complex objects. Logout functionality is not yet implemented, but you’ll get there by the end of this studio.

19.6.2. Create the User Model

  1. In the project you have cloned, create a User model identical to that in coding-events. The class needs:
    1. To be an entity.
    2. To have username and encrypted password fields.
    3. To have appropriate constructors, getters, setters.
  2. Encode the User password field.
    1. Add a static BCryptPasswordEncoder variable.
    2. Update the constructor that has arguments to encode the password field.
    3. Add a method to check password values.
  3. Create a UserRepository.
    1. Add the special query method to find a user by username.

Tip

At this point, re-starting your application will not change the view at localhost:8080, but you can confirm you have done everything correctly if you see a user table in MySQL Workbench.

19.6.3. Create the Login and Registration Forms

  1. Create an AuthenticationController.
    1. Include an autowired UserRepository.
  2. Add session handling utilities. This includes:
    1. A static final variable for the session key.
    2. A method to get the user information from the session.
    3. A method to set the user in the session.
  3. Create two DTOs for the user registration and login forms in a new package, dto under models.
    1. Create a login form DTO with username and password fields.
    2. Create a register form DTO with the fields above and a field to verify a password.
  4. Handle the registration data.
    1. Add a GET handler in AuthenticationController to display a registration form.
    2. Create a register template with form fields corresponding to the register DTO.
    3. Create a POST handler in AuthenticationController to process the form.
      1. If the form has validation errors, re-render the registration form with a useful message.
      2. If the username is already tied to a user, add a fitting error message and re-render the form.
      3. If the two form fields for passwords do not match, add an error message and re-render the form.
      4. If none of the above conditions are met,
        1. Create a new user with the form data,
        2. Save the user to the database,
        3. Create a new user session,
        4. Redirect to the home page.
  5. Handle the login data.
    1. Repeat steps 1 + 2 for handling the registration data, this time with the login information.
    2. Apart from model validation checks and the final redirect, the POST handler for the login form will have some different checks from that of the registration form:
      1. If the database does not contain a user with the submitted username, add an error message and re-render.
      2. If the submitted password does not match the encoded password attached to the username in the form, add an error message and re-render.
      3. If the submission passes all of these checks, create a new user session.
  6. Handle logging out.
    1. Still in AuthenticationController, create a GET handler method for a path to logout.
      1. Invalidate the session data from the request object.
      2. Redirect the user to the login form.

Tip

Now, clicking the Logout navbar link will result in a redirect to the login page. You can also now create a brand new user through the link to register as one, and confirm the object’s existence in your user table.

19.6.4. Filter Requests

  1. Create an AuthenticationFilter class in the javawebdevtechjobsauthentication package.

    1. Have this class inherit from HandlerInterceptorAdapter.
    2. Add autowired instances of both UserRepository and AuthenticationController.
    3. Add a preHandle method.
      1. This must override the inherited method of the same name.
      2. Grab the session information from the request object.
      3. Query the the session data for a user.
      4. If a user exists, return true. Otherwise, redirect to the login page and return false.
  2. Create a whitelist.

    1. In the top of AuthenticationFilter, add a whitelist variable containing the paths that can be accessed without a user session.
    2. Create a method next that checks a given path against the values in the whitelist.
    3. Update preHandle with a call to this method.
      1. Before looking for session and user status, add a conditional that checks the whitelist status of the current request object.
  3. Register the filter with Spring.

    1. Create a class called WebApplicationConfig at the same level as AuthenticationFilter with the following:

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      @Configuration
      public class WebApplicationConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {
      
         // Create spring-managed object to allow the app to access our filter
         @Bean
         public AuthenticationFilter authenticationFilter() {
            return new AuthenticationFilter();
         }
      
         // Register the filter with the Spring container
         @Override
         public void addInterceptors(InterceptorRegistry registry) {
            registry.addInterceptor( authenticationFilter() );
         }
      
      }
      

Tip

You’ll know your filter setup works when you re-start your application and attempt to get to localhost:8080 but instead get redirected to /login.

You’ll also know that your filters are working if hitting your login and and register forms now renders them without any styling. Bonus points if you can determine why this is.

That’s it, that’s all. You’re done. Go forth and test the auth flow. Then add this to any other Spring project you’re working on!