jee-pac4j is the Jakarta EE / Java EE implementation of pac4j, the security engine for Java. If it is useful to you, please ⭐ star pac4j on GitHub: it helps other developers discover it!

The jee-pac4j project is an easy and powerful security library for JEE web applications and web services which supports authentication and authorization, but also logout and advanced features like session fixation and CSRF protection. It's based on the pac4j security engine. It's available under the Apache 2 license.

Main concepts and components:

1. A client represents an authentication mechanism. It performs the login process and returns a user profile. An indirect client is for web applications authentication while a direct client is for web services authentication:

▸ OpenID Connect - SAML - CAS - OAuth - HTTP - Kerberos - LDAP - SQL - JWT - MongoDB - IP address - REST API

2. An authorizer is meant to check authorizations on the authenticated user profile(s) or on the current web context:

▸ Roles - Anonymous / remember-me / (fully) authenticated - Profile type, attribute - CORS - CSRF - Security headers - IP address, HTTP method

3. A matcher defines whether the SecurityFilter must be applied and can be used for additional web processing

4. The SecurityFilter protects an url by checking that the user is authenticated and that the authorizations are valid, according to the clients and authorizers configuration. If the user is not authenticated, it performs authentication for direct clients or starts the login process for indirect clients

5. The CallbackFilter finishes the login process for an indirect client

6. The LogoutFilter logs out the user from the application and triggers the logout at the identity provider level

7. The WebContext, SessionStore and ProfileManager components can be injected via CDI

8. The FilterHelper handles the filters and their related mappings.

HttpServletResponseFilter exposes the current servlet response to the CDI producers, so WebContext and ProfileManager can also be injected in servlet and REST requests. The filter is discovered through @WebFilter when the library is packaged in WEB-INF/lib and annotation scanning is enabled. If scanning is disabled (for example, with metadata-complete="true"), register this filter explicitly before components which inject the response or a pac4j web context. Existing JSF applications can still use the FacesContext fallback. See the CDI setup for explicit registration examples.

To allow a servlet behind a filter to call startAsync(), enable asynchronous support when registering that filter. FilterHelper enables it automatically for mappings containing DispatcherType.ASYNC, or accepts an explicit Boolean among its parameters:

filterHelper.addFilterMapping("security", securityFilter, true, "/protected/*");

All filters and the servlet in the request chain must support asynchronous operations.

Two demo webapps: jee-pac4j-demo (a simple JSP/servlets demo) and jee-pac4j-cdi-demo (a more advanced demo using JSF and CDI) demonstrate many authentication mechanisms: Facebook, Twitter, form, basic auth, CAS, SAML, OpenID Connect, JWT...

Version 8.0.4 is available for both modules and uses pac4j 6.5.9. It adds CDI support outside JSF and configurable asynchronous filter support, fixes renewal of expired profiles through CDI, and supports building the library with Java 23+ through explicit Lombok annotation processing. The CI verifies builds on Java 17 and 25. See the 8.0.4 release notes.

The latest released version is the . The next version is under development.

See the release notes.

See the migration guide as well.

You can use the mailing lists or the commercial support.