The tutorial sample is a nice basic example to get you started. It uses simple namespace configuration throughout. The compiled application is included in the distribution zip file, ready to be deployed into your web container (spring-security-samples-tutorial-3.0.x.war). The form-based authentication mechanism is used in combination with the commonly-used remember-me authentication provider to automatically remember the login using cookies.

We recommend you start with the tutorial sample, as the XML is minimal and easy to follow. Most importantly, you can easily add this one XML file (and its corresponding web.xml entries) to your existing application. Only when this basic integration is achieved do we suggest you attempt adding in method authorization or domain object security.

The Contacts Sample is an advanced example in that it illustrates the more powerful features of domain object access control lists (ACLs) in addition to basic application security. The application provides an interface with which the users are able to administer a simple database of contacts (the domain objects).

To deploy, simply copy the WAR file from Spring Security distribution into your container’s webapps directory. The war should be called spring-security-samples-contacts-3.0.x.war (the appended version number will vary depending on what release you are using).

After starting your container, check the application can load. Visit http://localhost:8080/contacts (or whichever URL is appropriate for your web container and the WAR you deployed).

Next, click "Debug". You will be prompted to authenticate, and a series of usernames and passwords are suggested on that page. Simply authenticate with any of these and view the resulting page. It should contain a success message similar to the following:

Once you successfully receive the above message, return to the sample application's home page and click "Manage". You can then try out the application. Notice that only the contacts available to the currently logged on user are displayed, and only users with ROLE_SUPERVISOR are granted access to delete their contacts. Behind the scenes, the MethodSecurityInterceptor is securing the business objects.

The application allows you to modify the access control lists associated with different contacts. Be sure to give this a try and understand how it works by reviewing the application context XML files.

The LDAP sample application provides a basic configuration and sets up both a namespace configuration and an equivalent configuration using traditional beans, both in the same application context file. This means there are actually two identical authentication providers configured in this application.

The CAS sample requires that you run both a CAS server and CAS client. It isn't included in the distribution so you should check out the project code as described in the introduction. You'll find the relevant files under the sample/cas directory. There's also a Readme.txt file in there which explains how to run both the server and the client directly from the source tree, complete with SSL support. You have to download the CAS Server web application (a war file) from the CAS site and drop it into the samples/cas/server directory.

This sample application demonstrates how to wire up beans from the pre-authentication framework to make use of login information from a J2EE container. The user name and roles are those setup by the container.

The code is in samples/preauth.