How to get Authenticated with spring security rest plugin in Grails

Question

I'm using Grails version 2.4.3 . I am creating an application that supports RESTful APIs. Since access to these APIs should be authenticated , I tried out the Spring Security REST plugin. I checked out this example and what I could understand is , the /api/login controller is the authentication point which receives the user credentials in JSON format and after successful authentication it provides the acces token as response. I tried sending a POST request to /api/login/ with valid JSON data using the POSTMAN Rest Client. But it gives me the following error.

401 Unauthorized , Similar to 403 Forbidden, but specifically for use when authentication is possible but has failed or not yet been provided. The response must include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource.

I also tried using IntellijIDEA's REST Client but doesn't work. Then i tried by sending AJAX Request to /api/login/ with valid JSON data , but getting 401 on console. What is the problem here? Is this the correct login end point? How can i get authenticated using JQuery?

Answer 1

You can try this code for authentication,I am sending user id and password in request header you can try as you wish :- inject following services:-

def springSecurityService
def authenticationManager

and use following code

def login = {
            final String authorization = request.getHeader("Authorization");
            if (authorization != null && authorization.startsWith("Basic")) {
                boolean authResult = authenticateUser(authorization)
                if (authResult) {
                    render response.status
                } else {
                    render authFailed(response)
                }

            } else {
                render authFailed(response)
            }
        }
   protected boolean authenticateUser(String authorization) {
        // Authorization: Basic base64credentials
        def base64Credentials = authorization.substring("Basic".length()).trim();
        byte[] credentials = base64Credentials.decodeBase64()
        String actualCredential = new String(credentials)
        // credentials format like username:password
        final String[] values = actualCredential.split(":", 2);
        UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken authRequest = new UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(values[0], values[1]);

        try {
            def authentication = authenticationManager.authenticate(authRequest);
            def securityContext = SecurityContextHolder.getContext();
            securityContext.setAuthentication(authentication);
            def session = request.session;
            session.setAttribute("SPRING_SECURITY_CONTEXT", securityContext);
        }
        catch (BadCredentialsException exception) {
            return false

        }
        return true

    }

    protected HttpServletResponse authFailedResponse(HttpServletResponse response) {
        response.setStatus(401)
        response.setHeader("WWW-Authenticate", "Basic realm=\"nmrs_m7VKmomQ2YM3:\"")
        return response;
    }

Answer 2

Try this

$.ajax({
        url: " http://localhost:8080/AppName/api/login",
        type: "POST",
        crossDomain: true,
        data: JSON.stringify({"username":"yourusername" , "password":"yourpassword"}),
        contentType:  'application/json; charset=utf-8',
        dataType: "json",
        success: function (response) {
            console.log(response);


        },
        error: function (xhr, status) {
            alert("error");
        }
    })  });