Page History

A This document is a  brief description of the processing that occurs to authenticate and authorize an HTTP request using Acegi and the SAIS Framework.

The HTTP request is passed through a series of filters, called the filter chain. Each filter performs a specific task in a particular order. The filter chain is can be configured in the applicationContext-web.xml file, or in a separate applicationContext-common-security.xml file, located in src/main/resources of the application. Upon successful authentication and authorization a SecurityContext is established that can be used by the application. 

The configuration bean that holds the filter configuration is called the filterChainProxy. As the name suggests, it acts as an interface to the filter chain. A servlet filter using this proxy class is also defined in the web.xml so it gets used by the servlet.

 <bean id="filterChainProxy" class="org.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy">
		<property name="filterInvocationDefinitionSource">
			<value>
				PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT
				/css/**=#NONE#
				/dhtml/**=#NONE#
				/images/**=#NONE#
				/js/**=#NONE#
				/**=httpSessionContextIntegrationFilter,exceptionTranslationFilter,ssoAuthenticationProcessingFilter,mitBasicProcessingFilter,filterSecurityInterceptor,switchUserProcessingFilter
			</value>
		</property>
	</bean>

...