SecurityContextHolder.getContext() is NULL

[cornflakeGirl]

Hi Guys,

Hope you can help with a strange issue I am seeing. Hopefully I am doing something very silly and this error is easily fixable.

I am trying to retrieve the username of the person currently logged in from the security context. I do this in the following manner in my unit test (it is broken up more than it has to be for debugging purposes):

SecurityContext ctx = SecurityContextHolder.getContext();
Authentication author = ctx.getAuthentication();
String username = ((UserDetails) author.getPrincipal()).getUsername();

After the first line, ctx's value is: org.acegisecurity.context.SecurityContextImpl@ffff ffff: Null authentication

Other than this, my unit test works just fine -- authenticating the username/password passed in, and retrieving their roles.

Here is my acegi configuration file:

<beans>

	<bean id="initialDirContextFactory"
		class="org.acegisecurity.ldap.DefaultInitialDirContextFactory">
		<constructor-arg value="ldap://${ldap.url}/${ldap.dc}" />
		<property name="managerDn"
			value="CN=${ldap.user},${ldap.manager}" />
		<property name="managerPassword" value="${ldap.password}" />
		<property name="useConnectionPool" value="false" />
		<property name="extraEnvVars">
			<map>
				<entry>
					<key>
						<value>java.naming.referral</value>
					</key>
					<value>follow</value>
				</entry>
			</map>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<bean id="userSearch"
		class="org.acegisecurity.ldap.search.FilterBasedLdapUserSearch">
		<constructor-arg value="" />
		<constructor-arg value="(sAMAccountName={0})" />
		<constructor-arg ref="initialDirContextFactory" />
		<property name="searchSubtree" value="true" />
	</bean>

	<bean id="ldapAuthenticationProvider"
		class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ldap.LdapAuthenticationProvider">
		<constructor-arg>
			<bean
				class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ldap.authenticator.BindAuthenticator">
				<constructor-arg ref="initialDirContextFactory" />
				<property name="userSearch" ref="userSearch" />
			</bean>
		</constructor-arg>
		<constructor-arg>
			<bean
				class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ldap.populator.DefaultLdapAuthoritiesPopulator">
				<constructor-arg>
					<ref local="initialDirContextFactory" />
				</constructor-arg>
				<constructor-arg>
					<value>${ldap.groupSearch}</value>
				</constructor-arg>
				<property name="groupRoleAttribute" value="CN" />
				<property name="convertToUpperCase" value="true"/>
			</bean>
		</constructor-arg>
	</bean>

	<bean id="ldapUserDetailsMapper"
		class="org.acegisecurity.userdetails.ldap.LdapUserDetailsMapper">
		<property name="passwordAttributeName" value="userpassword"/>
		<property name="convertToUpperCase" value="true" />
		<property name="rolePrefix" value="" />
		<property name="roleAttributes">
			<list>
				<value>memberOf</value>
			</list>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<bean id="authenticationManager"
		class="org.acegisecurity.providers.ProviderManager">
		<property name="providers">
			<list>
				<ref local="ldapAuthenticationProvider" />
			</list>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<bean id="filterChainProxy"
		class="org.acegisecurity.util.FilterChainProxy">
		<property name="filterInvocationDefinitionSource">
			<value>
				CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON
				PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT
				/**=httpSessionContextIntegrationFilter,authenticationProcessingFilter,anonymousProcessingFilter,exceptionTranslationFilter,filterInvocationInterceptor
			</value>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<!-- Log failed authentication attempts to commons-logging -->
	<bean id="loggerListener"
		class="org.acegisecurity.event.authentication.LoggerListener" />

	<bean id="passwordEncoder"
		class="org.acegisecurity.providers.encoding.Md5PasswordEncoder" />

	<bean id="anonymousAuthenticationProvider"
		class="org.acegisecurity.providers.anonymous.AnonymousAuthenticationProvider">
		<property name="key">
			<value>foobar</value>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<bean id="authenticationProcessingFilterEntryPoint"
		class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFilterEntryPoint">
		<property name="loginFormUrl">
			<value>/login/login.action</value>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<bean id="roleVoter" class="org.acegisecurity.vote.RoleVoter" />

	<bean id="httpRequestAccessDecisionManager"
		class="org.acegisecurity.vote.AffirmativeBased">
		<property name="allowIfAllAbstainDecisions">
			<value>false</value>
		</property>
		<property name="decisionVoters">
			<list>
				<ref bean="roleVoter" />
			</list>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<bean id="httpSessionContextIntegrationFilter"
		class="org.acegisecurity.context.HttpSessionContextIntegrationFilter" />

	<bean id="authenticationProcessingFilter"
		class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFilter">
		<property name="authenticationManager">
			<ref bean="authenticationManager" />
		</property>
		<property name="authenticationFailureUrl">
			<value>/login/login.action?login_error=1</value>
		</property>
		<property name="defaultTargetUrl">
			<value>/main.action</value>
		</property>
		<property name="filterProcessesUrl">
			<value>/j_acegi_security_check</value>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<bean id="anonymousProcessingFilter"
		class="org.acegisecurity.providers.anonymous.AnonymousProcessingFilter">
		<property name="key">
			<value>foobar</value>
		</property>
		<property name="userAttribute">
			<value>anonymousUser,ROLE_ANONYMOUS</value>
		</property>
	</bean>

	<bean id="exceptionTranslationFilter"
		class="org.acegisecurity.ui.ExceptionTranslationFilter">
		<property name="authenticationEntryPoint"
			ref="authenticationProcessingFilterEntryPoint" />
	</bean>

	<bean id="filterInvocationInterceptor"
		class="org.acegisecurity.intercept.web.FilterSecurityInterceptor">
		<property name="authenticationManager">
			<ref bean="authenticationManager" />
		</property>
		<property name="accessDecisionManager">
			<ref bean="httpRequestAccessDecisionManager" />
		</property>
		<property name="objectDefinitionSource">
			<value>
				CONVERT_URL_TO_LOWERCASE_BEFORE_COMPARISON
				PATTERN_TYPE_APACHE_ANT
				blah blah blah
		</property>
	</bean>

</beans>

[cornflakeGirl]

Nevermind, problem solved by adding ctx.setAuthentication(...);. DOH!

[blueocean]

holder.setContext(?);?should be a SecurityContext but how can i instanciate it

[Andreas Senft]

You do not need to. The default ThreadLocalSecurityContextHolderStrategy ensures that a context is created if none is available.
So getContext() never returns null (as specified in the API doc).

Regards,
Andreas

[blueocean]

thanks for your reply;
what i should do about the
ctx.setAuthentication(...)
do i need to instanticate a Authentication ?

[karldmoore]

What is it you are trying to do? If you want to programmatically authenticate someone, then yes you need to.