How to set authorization on View level in Vaadin

Question

I'm using Vaadin 7, Spring Security and the Spring-Vaadin-Integration addon and have configured the authentication bit so it's working like a charm. When I get to the authorization part I got into some hairy trouble. I want to set authorization per View without having to check for authorization at navigation level (like in the AppFoundation addon).

So, what I want is something like this:

@Component
@Scope("prototype")
@VaadinView(value = ASecuredView.NAME, cached = true)
@Secured("ROLE_ADMIN_PROD")
public class ASecuredView extends GridLayout implements View {
    ...
}

When an unauthorized user tries to enter this view, I want to handle the AccessDeniedException and present the user with a notification message that explains something in the lines of "The view is only accessible by admins".

I do have the correct user role when I invoke the view and no exceptions are thrown when I try to navigate there with an authorized user, so the annotation itself seems to be working just as it should.

The problem is that I cannot catch the AccessDeniedException.

I have tried several different methods of solving this problem, but to no avail. Here is some of them:

• I created a CustomAccessDeniedHandler, no exception caught.
• I tried the simple access-denied-handler tag, but the exception is still not caught.
• I tried "re-throwing" the exception with a org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleMappingExceptionResolver, but still same behaviour.
• I tried the @PreFilter annotation, but it didn't work.
• I tried using a handleSecuredAnnotations (around) Aspect, but even that did not work!

Am I approaching this in the wrong way?

Maybe there is an easier/better way of achieving this? How?

Here's my spring-security.xml. I'll provide the whole shabang. Note that I tried the different methods separately as well:

<global-method-security secured-annotations="enabled" />

<!-- Spring-Security -->
<http auto-config="true" use-expressions="true" disable-url-rewriting="true">
    <form-login authentication-success-handler-ref="authenticationSuccessHandler" />
    <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="isAuthenticated()" />
    <logout success-handler-ref="logoutSuccessHandler" invalidate-session="true" logout-url="/logout" />
    <access-denied-handler ref="customAccessDeniedHandler" />
</http>

<authentication-manager>
    <authentication-provider ref="activeDirectoryAuthenticationProvider" />
</authentication-manager>

<beans:bean id="activeDirectoryAuthenticationProvider" class="org.springframework.security.ldap.authentication.ad.ActiveDirectoryLdapAuthenticationProvider">
    <beans:constructor-arg value="someserver.com" />
    <beans:constructor-arg value="ldap://ldaplb.someserver.com:389" />
    <beans:property name="userDetailsContextMapper" ref="customUserDetailsContextMapper" />
    <beans:property name="convertSubErrorCodesToExceptions" value="true" />
</beans:bean>

<beans:bean id="customAccessDeniedHandler" class="com.some.path.web.CustomAccessDeniedHandler" />
<beans:bean id="customUserDetailsContextMapper" class="com.some.path.web.CustomUserDetailsContextMapper" />

<beans:bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleMappingExceptionResolver">
    <beans:property name="defaultErrorView" value="uncaughtException" />
    <beans:property name="excludedExceptions" value="org.springframework.security.access.AccessDeniedException" />

    <beans:property name="exceptionMappings">
        <beans:props>
            <beans:prop key=".DataAccessException">dataAccessFailure</beans:prop>
            <beans:prop key=".NoSuchRequestHandlingMethodException">resourceNotFound</beans:prop>
            <beans:prop key=".TypeMismatchException">resourceNotFound</beans:prop>
            <beans:prop key=".MissingServletRequestParameterException">resourceNotFound</beans:prop>
        </beans:props>
    </beans:property>
</beans:bean>

<aop:config>
    <aop:aspect id="securedAspect" ref="securityFeedbackAspect">
        <aop:around pointcut="@annotation(org.springframework.security.access.annotation.Secured)" method="handleSecuredAnnotations" />
    </aop:aspect>
</aop:config>

Answer 1

I ended up implementing an ErrorHandler in the MainUI class. I am certain there are better ways of solving this, but I couldn't find any.

public class MainUI extends UI implements ErrorHandler {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    @Override
    protected void init(VaadinRequest request) {
        VaadinSession.getCurrent().setErrorHandler(this);
        @SuppressWarnings("unused")
        DiscoveryNavigator navigator = new DiscoveryNavigator(this, this);
    }

    @Override
    public void error(com.vaadin.server.ErrorEvent event) {

        if (event.getThrowable() instanceof AccessDeniedException) {
            AccessDeniedException accessDeniedException = (AccessDeniedException) event.getThrowable();
            Notification.show(accessDeniedException.getMessage(), Notification.Type.ERROR_MESSAGE);
            getUI().getNavigator().navigateTo(FirstView.NAME);
            return;
        }
        // connector event
        if (event.getThrowable().getCause().getCause().getCause() instanceof AccessDeniedException) {
            AccessDeniedException accessDeniedException = (AccessDeniedException) event.getThrowable().getCause().getCause().getCause();
            Notification.show(accessDeniedException.getMessage(), Notification.Type.ERROR_MESSAGE);
            getUI().getNavigator().navigateTo(FirstView.NAME);
            return;
        }
    }
}