Conditional UI with GWT and Spring Security?

Question

What are the best practices for creating a Conditional UI using GWT and Spring Security based on a users Role/Permissions?

I'm aware that you can't rely on client side security. I will have security checks on the server side. The Conditional UI is really only for appearance.

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 02 '14 at 16:57

You will need a service to get the list of the user's roles from the server (which has them) to the client (which does not). In the onSuccess method of the callback, you would have code similar to the following:

if (roles.contains("role1")) {
    GWT.runAsync(new RunAsyncCallback() {
        public void onFailure(Throwable caught) {
            Window.alert("Code download failed");
        }

        public void onSuccess() {
            // code here if the user has role1
        }
    });
}
if (roles.contains("role2")) {
    GWT.runAsync(new RunAsyncCallback() {
        public void onFailure(Throwable caught) {
            Window.alert("Code download failed");
        }

        public void onSuccess() {
            // code here if the user has role2
        }
    });
}
// and so on

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 14 '12 at 13:55

We use GWT.runAsync to chunk off sections of code that users may not need to see. When it's time to load the UI, we just check to see what they need and then display it to them.

We have abstracted most of the necessary business logic into settings we download for each user, like "showTeacherControls" and "showAdvisorControls" and "showStudentControls." Then the client can just check those flags to figure out what to display.

Conditional UI with GWT and Spring Security?

2 Answers2