Java – Use postman to test the API that enables spring security

I’m developing an application based on Spring Boot + Spring Security. I have used jdbcAuthentication to authenticate users. I also configured a custom login form.

After running the application, I was able to successfully log in and get an API response through a browser, but when I tried to test the API with Postman, I only got an HTML login page as a response. How do I get the required API json response?

My Profile:

@Override
            protected void configure(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth)
                    throws Exception {
            System.out.println("auth manager called");
              auth. jdbcAuthentication() .usersByUsernameQuery(usersQuery)
              .authoritiesByUsernameQuery(rolesQuery) .dataSource(dataSource)
              .passwordEncoder(noop);

}
         @Override
            protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
                System.out.println("Http scurity called");
                http.httpBasic().
                and().
                        authorizeRequests()
                        .antMatchers("/").permitAll()
                        .antMatchers("/login").permitAll()
                        .antMatchers("/registration").permitAll()
                        .antMatchers("/admin/**").hasAuthority("ADMIN")
                        .antMatchers("/db").hasAuthority("DBA")
                        .antMatchers("/user").hasAuthority("USER").anyRequest()
                        .authenticated().and().csrf().disable().formLogin()
                        .loginPage("/login").failureUrl("/login?error=true")
                        .successHandler(customSuccessHandler)
                        .usernameParameter("username")
                        .passwordParameter("password")
                        .and().logout()
                        .logoutRequestMatcher(new AntPathRequestMatcher("/logout"))
                        .logoutSuccessUrl("/").and().exceptionHandling()
                        .accessDeniedPage("/access-denied");
            }

My Controller file:

@RequestMapping(value = { "/", "/login" }, method = RequestMethod.GET)
        public ModelAndView login() {
            System.out.println("/login called");
            ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView();
            modelAndView.setViewName("login");
            return modelAndView;
        }

@RequestMapping(value = "/admin", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = { "application/json" })
            public UserUniconnect home(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {

Authentication auth = SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication();
                String currentUser = null;
                if (!( auth instanceof AnonymousAuthenticationToken)) {
                    currentUser = auth.getName();
                }

User user1 = (User) SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication().getPrincipal();
                user1.getAuthorities();
                System.out.println("++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++");
                System.out.println(request == null);
                Users u = (Users) request.getSession(false).getAttribute("user");
                Uniconnect uni = (Uniconnect) request.getSession(false).getAttribute("uniconnect");
                UserUniconnect uu = new UserUniconnect();
                uu.setUser(u);
                uu.setUniconnect(uni);

return uu;
            }

I’m returning a java object as a response that Spring Boot is able to convert to JSON format.

Postman Screenshot

Setting basic authentication parameters in Postman may help:

You will most likely need to get the session ID from the cookie after manually logging in using your browser, and then provide this cookie to Postman:

Getting cookies from your browser varies from the browser itself, but both Chrome and Firefox have developer utilities built in, so this shouldn’t be a problem.