Hi there.
I need to make a login form using tapestry 5 (to have a consisten look'n'feel with the rest of the site, and also because I need to process user-submitted data with some code of mine and I cannot do this in a filter).

Tapestry5 forms doesn't allow to choose field names (that is: I cannot have field names like j_username/j_password; neither can I submit to j_spring-securty-check).
I want to to manage these values with my code BEFORE that the authentication occurs, so I was in need to call my tapestry methods and THEN call authenticationManager.authenticate(request) as in the example of chapter 5.3 of the spring security manual.

Alas, to do this I need to access the AuthenticationManager from my tapestry methods.

I guessed that the proper way to look for a bean inside a web app was to call something similar to this:
Code:
ApplicationContext context = new XmlWebApplicationContext();
myAuthenticationManager = (Authenticationmanager) context.getBean(AuthenticationManager.class);
as found in various examples around the web, but I was halted by the (in)famous "BeanFactory not initialized or already closed - call 'refresh' before accessing beans via the ApplicationContext..."

So I called refresh... just to find that I needed to set a ServletContext to the XmlWebApplicationContext()... BUT I HAVE NO SERVLET CONTEXT in a tapestry5 pojo!

After struggling with bean factories, listeners and friends I found a way to overcome this problem:
1) I declared a bean that has a static method to execute authentication and a static AuthenticationManager variable;
2) I passed the AuthenticationManager with a ref inside security.xml to this bean;
3) and then, in my code, I called the static method within my bean that, being static, can be called even if I have no access to the bean instance. (see code at the end for details)

This seems to be very ugly... Is there any better way to do this? That is:
Question 1: what is the best way to obtain a spring bean from a web app?
Question 2: is there any better way to access the authentication manager ?
Question 3: is any other way to execute a programmatic authentication from my code?

Thanks, GHJoke

--- CODE INSIDE MY BEAN ---

Code:
class AuthenticationManagerHandler {
 ...
 private static AuthenticationManager s_authenticationManager=null;
    
 AuthenticationManager getAuthenticationManager(){
    return s_authenticationManager; 
 }
    
 public void setAuthenticationManager(AuthenticationManager i_authenticationManager) {
    s_authenticationManager=i_authenticationManager;
 }

 public static boolean executeLogin(String i_username, String i_password, List<GrantedAuthority> i_authorities) {
	if (s_authenticationManager == null) {
		return false;
	}
	
	try {
		Authentication l_request = new UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(i_username, i_password, l_authorities);
		Authentication l_result = s_authenticationManager.authenticate( l_request );
		SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication( l_result );
	} catch (Exception l_exception) {
		return false;
	}
	
	return true;
 }
 ...
}
--- XML INSIDE MY SECURITY.XML CONFIGURATION FILE ---

Code:
...
<bean id="myAuthenticationManagerHandler" class="com.amadego.AuthenticationManagerHandler">
	<property name="authenticationManager" ref="springAuthenticationManager" />
</bean>

<authentication-manager alias="springAuthenticationManager">
       ...
<authentication-manager>
...
--- CODE INSIDE MY TAPESTRY METHOD ---

Code:
... do my housekeeping ...
 boolean isAuthenticated=AuthenticationManagerHandler.executeLogin("myuser","mypassword",myAuthotities);
 if (! isAuthenticated) {
    // KO, stop the user!
    ...
    return;
 }
  //OK, go on
  ...