Disable Spring Security for OPTIONS Http Method

Question

Is it possible to disable Spring Security for a type of HTTP Method?

We have a Spring REST application with services that require Authorization token to be attached in the header of http request. I am writing a JS client for it and using JQuery to send the GET/POST requests. The application is CORS enabled with this filter code.

doFilter(....) {

  HttpServletResponse httpResp = (HttpServletResponse) response;
  httpResp.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
  httpResp.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "POST, GET, OPTIONS, DELETE");
  httpResp.setHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "3600");
  Enumeration<String> headersEnum = ((HttpServletRequest) request).getHeaders("Access-Control-Request-Headers");
  StringBuilder headers = new StringBuilder();
  String delim = "";
  while (headersEnum.hasMoreElements()) {
    headers.append(delim).append(headersEnum.nextElement());
    delim = ", ";
  }
  httpResp.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", headers.toString());
}

But when JQuery sends in the OPTIONS request for CORS, the server responds with Authorization Failed token. Clearly the OPTIONS request, lacks Authorization token. So is it possible to let the OPTIONS escape the Security Layer from the Spring Security Configuration?

Answer 1

If you're using an annotation based security config file (@EnableWebSecurity & @Configuration) you can do something like the following in the configure() method to allow for the OPTION requests to be permitted by Spring Security without authentication for a given path:

@Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception
{
     http
    .csrf().disable()
    .authorizeRequests()
      .antMatchers(HttpMethod.OPTIONS,"/path/to/allow").permitAll()//allow CORS option calls
      .antMatchers("/resources/**").permitAll()
      .anyRequest().authenticated()
    .and()
    .formLogin()
    .and()
    .httpBasic();
}