Question

Is it possible to use @RolesAllowed annotation on a JAX-WS webservice and if so how?

I have a webservice on glassfish 3.1.1 using Basic Authentication but restrictions expressed using @RolesAllowed are ignored. The role information should be available, as I can access it like this:

@Resource
WebServiceContext wsContext;

if (wsContext.isUserInRole("READ"))
log.info("Role: READ");

I get the expected role but still all methods are accessible, even if @RolesAllowed is set to different role. @DenyAll is not working as well.

If these annotations are not supported, is it possible to use deployment descriptors to manage access to webservice methods based on user roles?

Edit:
This part of the JAVA EE 6 tutorial describes the usage of @RolesAllowed annotation. It reads

For Java EE components, you define security roles using the @DeclareRoles and @RolesAllowed metadata annotations.

Web services are not listed as Java EE components in the first part of the tutorial, so it looks like the security annotations are not supported.

Edit2
Following Izan’s post, I gave this another try. Here is what I did:

@Webservice
@DeclareRoles(value = {"READ", "UPDATE", "DELETE"})
public class ServiceImpl implements Service {
  @Override
  @WebMethod(operationName = "helloWorld")
  @RolesAllowed({"NONE"})
  public String helloWorld() throws Exception {
     return "Hello World!";
  }
}

Using this kind of setup, everybody can access the method, no matter what roles are set. Users get authenticated (can see that in audit.log) but no authorization takes place. As stated above, I can access the role from WebServiceContext (I actually do manual authorization using this info).

Adding @Stateless annotation, let’s me use the security annotations. So @permitAll works as expected. But using roles still does not work, as user don’t get authenticated now. They show up as ANONYMOUS in audit log and access is denied to them.

My web.xml looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" version="3.0">
 <display-name>OneMore</display-name>

 <security-constraint>  
    <display-name>WebServiceSecurity</display-name>  

    <web-resource-collection>  
      <web-resource-name>Authorized users only</web-resource-name>  
      <url-pattern>/service</url-pattern>  
      <http-method>POST</http-method>
    </web-resource-collection>  

    <auth-constraint>       
       <role-name>READ</role-name>
       <role-name>UPDATE</role-name>
       <role-name>DELETE</role-name>
    </auth-constraint>  

 </security-constraint>  

 <login-config>
    <auth-method>BASIC</auth-method>
 </login-config>

 <security-role>
    <role-name>READ</role-name>
 </security-role>

 <security-role>
    <role-name>UPDATE</role-name>
 </security-role>

 <security-role>
    <role-name>DELETE</role-name>
 </security-role>
</web-app>

Glassfish-web.xml just maps role names to group names, like this:

<security-role-mapping>
   <role-name>READ</role-name>
   <group-name>READ</group-name>
</security-role-mapping>

Edit 3
Thanks to Izan and countless tries later I finally got it working.

As said before, the main point was switching from a plain web service to an EJB web service by adding @Stateless annotation. This allows for using the security annotations.

This change required to change the deployment descriptors as well. While the original web service required a glassfish-web.xml for setting up the roles, a glassfish-ejb-jar.xml is required afterwards.

Answer 1

Maybe this is a pretty dumb question, but are your webservices EJBs? As noted in Security Annotations and Authorization in GlassFish and the Java EE 5 SDK

The annotations @PermitAll, @DenyAll and @RolesAllowed are defined for specifying permissions of EJB business method

I use those annotations with bottom-up WS from stateless EJBs and they work like a charm in JBoss.

---

EDIT 1 @TPete
I’ll add some code to show you more or less what I’m doing.

@Stateless
@WebService()
@WebContext(contextRoot = WSContextRoot.CTX_ROOT, 
    authMethod = "BASIC")
@EndpointConfig(configName = "Standard WSSecurity Endpoint")
@SecurityDomain(value = "myDeclaredDomain")
@RolesAllowed({ "AUTHORISED" })
@SOAPBinding(style = SOAPBinding.Style.DOCUMENT)
public class MyWS implements MyInterface {
    @Override
    public void doSomething(){
        //impl
    }
}

And as for the interface

@Remote
@WebService
public interface MyInterface {

    @WebMethod(operationName="doSomething")
    public void doSomething(); 
}

WebContext, EndpointConfig and SecurityDomain are JBoss annotation, but I suppose there is something similar for GlassFish, or an equivalent way of doing it. The security domain is included in a deployment descriptor for jboss, and defined in the login-config.xml from the configuration files of JBoss.

---

EDIT 2 @TPete

I suppose you need to add some EJB deployment descriptors from Glassfish, a sun-ejb-jar.xml file package inside your EAR. Again, from the same article as posted in the answer, there is a Using Deployment Descriptors chapter that states

For EJB web service endpoints with @RolesAllowed, you need to specify the type of authentication to use by specifying the and elements in sun-ejb-jar.xml. For username-password authentication, set the element to BASIC, as shown in the following example. This step is required only for EJB web service endpoints, and is not required for EJBs.

Since you are defining an EJB web service endpoint, I think you should put this descriptor in you EAR. Have a quick look at that article, it describes quite well the process you are following 🙂