Spring Boot HTTPS
last modified July 24, 2023
In this article we show how to set up secure communication with HTTPS in a Spring Boot application.
Spring is a popular Java application framework and Spring Boot is an evolution of Spring that helps create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based applications easily.
HTTPS
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a secure communication protocol used in Internet communication. It ensures data integrity and data confidentiality. It is an extension of the HTTP protocol. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS) or, int the past, the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). The protocol is often referred to as HTTP over TLS, or HTTP over SSL.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is an industry standard protocol for keeping Internet connections secure by protecting all sensitive data that is being sent between systems. It prevents intruders from reading and modifying any information transferred. TLS (Transport Layer Security) is a more recent secure version of SSL. Today, the certificates provided by certificate authorities are based on TLS only. These tho terms are often used interchangeably.
In Java, truststore is normally used to store the certificates of trusted entities. It maintains a store of certificates of all its trusted parties which it trusts. Keystore is used to store the server keys (both public and private) along with signed certificates.
Creating TLS certificates
We can obtain a TLS certificate from a certification authority (CA), such as Verison, Symantec or Digicert. This takes time and costs money. (There is a popular free automated certificate authority called Let's Encrypt.) Another option, which is ideal for development purposes, is to create a self-signed certificate.
In this article we use a self-signed certificate.
Creating self-signed certificate
First, we create a self-signed certificate. Certificates can use either of
the following two certificate formats: PKCS12 or JKS.
Public Key Cryptographic Standards (PKCS12) is a password protected format that can contain multiple certificates and keys; it's an industry-wide used format. Java KeyStore (JKS) is a proprietary format similar to PKCS12. It is limited to the Java environment.
We can use keytool or OpenSSL tools to generate the certificates
from the command line. Keytool is shipped with Java Runtime Environment and
OpenSSL could be downloaded from
https://www.openssl.org.
The keytool
Java keytool manages a keystore (database) of cryptographic keys,
X.509 certificate chains, and trusted certificates.
$ keytool -genkeypair -alias mycert -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 \
-storetype PKCS12 -keystore zetcode.p12 -validity 365
With the keytool, we genereate a set of cryptographic keys and
store them in a new keystore. It is possible to store multiple numbers of
key-pair in the same keystore, each identified by a unique alias.
If we do not specify the password explicitly as in our case, for the keystore, the tool will ask for one along with a couple of other options.
The -genkeypair option generates a key pair (a public key and
associated private key). It wraps the public key into an X.509 v3 self-signed
certificate, which is stored as a single-element certificate chain. This
certificate chain and the private key are stored in a new keystore entry
identified by alias. The -alias option gives the new pair of keys a
name. The -keyalg option specifies the algorithm to be used to
generate the key pair, and the keysize value specifies the size of
each key to be generated.
The -storetype specifies the storetype, which can be either JKS
or PKCS12. The -keystore gives the new store a name. The
-validity option specifies the number of days the certificate is
valid.
Spring Boot HTTPS example
The following application shows how to set up HTTPS with the previously created self-signed certificate. In addition, we redirect the HTTP traffic to HTTPS.
build.gradle
...
src
├───main
│ ├───java
│ │ └───com
│ │ └───zetcode
│ │ │ Application.java
│ │ ├───config
│ │ │ WebConfig.java
│ │ └───controller
│ │ MyController.java
│ └───resources
│ application.properties
│ zetcode.p12
└───test
└───java
This is the project structure. We move the keystore database to the
src/main/resources directory.
plugins {
id 'org.springframework.boot' version '3.1.1'
id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version '1.1.0'
id 'java'
}
group = 'com.example'
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
sourceCompatibility = '17'
repositories {
mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
}
This is the Gradle build file. It is a very simple web application,
so we need only the spring-boot-starter-web starter.
server.port=8443 server.ssl.key-alias=mycert server.ssl.key-store-password=s$cret server.ssl.key-store=classpath:zetcode.p12 server.ssl.key-store-provider=SUN server.ssl.key-store-type=PKCS12
In the application.properties, we configure the application.
We specify the port, key-pair alias, keystore password, keystore location,
provider and type.
package com.zetcode.config;
import org.apache.catalina.Context;
import org.apache.catalina.connector.Connector;
import org.apache.tomcat.util.descriptor.web.SecurityCollection;
import org.apache.tomcat.util.descriptor.web.SecurityConstraint;
import org.springframework.boot.web.embedded.tomcat.TomcatServletWebServerFactory;
import org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.server.ServletWebServerFactory;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
@Configuration
public class WebConfig {
@Bean
public ServletWebServerFactory servletContainer() {
var tomcat = new TomcatServletWebServerFactory() {
@Override
protected void postProcessContext(Context context) {
var securityConstraint = new SecurityConstraint();
securityConstraint.setUserConstraint("CONFIDENTIAL");
var collection = new SecurityCollection();
collection.addPattern("/*");
securityConstraint.addCollection(collection);
context.addConstraint(securityConstraint);
}
};
tomcat.addAdditionalTomcatConnectors(redirectConnector());
return tomcat;
}
private Connector redirectConnector() {
var connector = new Connector("org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol");
connector.setScheme("http");
connector.setPort(8080);
connector.setSecure(false);
connector.setRedirectPort(8443);
return connector;
}
}
In WebConfig, we configure Tomcat (the default Spring Boot
embedded server) to redirect HTTP traffic automatically to HTTPS.
package com.zetcode.controller;
import org.springframework.http.MediaType;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;
@RestController
public class MyController {
@GetMapping(value = "/hello", produces = MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN_VALUE)
public String hello(){
return "hello there";
}
}
In our controller, we have a simple page that returns a text message.
package com.zetcode;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
}
Application is the entry point which sets up Spring Boot
application.
We run the application with ./gradlew -q bootRun and navigate
to the https://localhost:8443/hello. Note that when the application
is launched for the first time, the browser gives a huge error message that
the site certificate is not trusted. We need to add a security exception for
our application to make it work.
In this article we have shown how to create a self-signed certificate and set up a Spring Boot application for HTTPS with this certificate.
