Serving static web resources in Spring Boot & Spring Security application

Here is the ultimate solution, after 20+ hours of research.

Step 1. Add 'MvcConfig.java' to your project.

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.ResourceHandlerRegistry;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.WebMvcConfigurerAdapter;

@Configuration
public class MvcConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {
    @Override
    public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
        registry
                .addResourceHandler("/resources/**")
                .addResourceLocations("/resources/");
    }
}

Step 2. Add configure(WebSecurity web) override to your SecurityConfig class

@Override
    public void configure(WebSecurity web) throws Exception {
        web
                .ignoring()
                .antMatchers("/resources/**");
    }

Step 3. Place all static resources in webapp/resources/..

There are a couple of things to be aware of:

• The Ant matchers match against the request path and not the path of the resource on the filesystem.
• Resources placed in src/main/resources/public will be served from the root of your application. For example src/main/resources/public/hello.jpg would be served from http://localhost:8080/hello.jpg

This is why your current matcher configuration hasn't permitted access to the static resources. For /resources/** to work, you would have to place the resources in src/main/resources/public/resources and access them at http://localhost:8080/resources/your-resource.

As you're using Spring Boot, you may want to consider using its defaults rather than adding extra configuration. Spring Boot will, by default, permit access to /css/**, /js/**, /images/**, and /**/favicon.ico. You could, for example, have a file named src/main/resources/public/images/hello.jpg and, without adding any extra configuration, it would be accessible at http://localhost:8080/images/hello.jpg without having to log in. You can see this in action in the web method security smoke test where access is permitted to the Bootstrap CSS file without any special configuration.

  @Override
      public void configure(WebSecurity web) throws Exception {
        web
          .ignoring()
             .antMatchers("/resources/**"); // #3
      }

Ignore any request that starts with "/resources/". This is similar to configuring http@security=none when using the XML namespace configuration.

This may be an answer (for spring boot 2) and a question at the same time. It seems that in spring boot 2 combined with spring security everything (means every route/antmatcher) is protected by default if you use an individual security mechanism extended from

WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter

If you don´t use an individual security mechanism, everything is as it was?

In older spring boot versions (1.5 and below) as Andy Wilkinson states in his above answer places like public/** or static/** are permitted by default.

So to sum this question/answer up - if you are using spring boot 2 with spring security and have an individual security mechanism you have to exclusivley permit access to static contents placed on any route. Like so:

@Configuration
public class SpringSecurityConfiguration extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

private final ThdAuthenticationProvider thdAuthenticationProvider;

private final ThdAuthenticationDetails thdAuthenticationDetails;

/**
 * Overloaded constructor.
 * Builds up the needed dependencies.
 *
 * @param thdAuthenticationProvider a given authentication provider
 * @param thdAuthenticationDetails  given authentication details
 */
@Autowired
public SpringSecurityConfiguration(@NonNull ThdAuthenticationProvider thdAuthenticationProvider,
                                   @NonNull ThdAuthenticationDetails thdAuthenticationDetails) {
    this.thdAuthenticationProvider = thdAuthenticationProvider;
    this.thdAuthenticationDetails = thdAuthenticationDetails;
}

/**
 * Creates the AuthenticationManager with the given values.
 *
 * @param auth the AuthenticationManagerBuilder
 */
@Autowired
public void configureGlobal(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth) {

    auth.authenticationProvider(thdAuthenticationProvider);
}

/**
 * Configures the http Security.
 *
 * @param http HttpSecurity
 * @throws Exception a given exception
 */
@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {

    http.authorizeRequests()
            .requestMatchers(PathRequest.toStaticResources().atCommonLocations()).permitAll()
            .antMatchers("/management/**").hasAnyAuthority(Role.Role_Engineer.getValue(),
            Role.Role_Admin.getValue())
            .antMatchers("/settings/**").hasAnyAuthority(Role.Role_Engineer.getValue(),
            Role.Role_Admin.getValue())

            .anyRequest()
            .fullyAuthenticated()
            .and()
            .formLogin()
            .authenticationDetailsSource(thdAuthenticationDetails)
            .loginPage("/login").permitAll()
            .defaultSuccessUrl("/bundle/index", true)
            .failureUrl("/denied")
            .and()
            .logout()
            .invalidateHttpSession(true)
            .logoutSuccessUrl("/login")
            .logoutUrl("/logout")
            .and()
            .exceptionHandling()
            .accessDeniedHandler(new CustomAccessDeniedHandler());
}

}

Please mind this line of code, which is new:

.requestMatchers(PathRequest.toStaticResources().atCommonLocations()).permitAll()

If you use spring boot 1.5 and below you don´t need to permit these locations (static/public/webjars etc.) explicitly.

Here is the official note, what has changed in the new security framework as to old versions of itself:

Security changes in Spring Boot 2.0 M4

I hope this helps someone. Thank you! Have a nice day!