Username/Password Authentication

One of the most common ways to authenticate a user is by validating a username and password. As such, Spring Security provides comprehensive support for authenticating with a username and password.

Reading the Username & Password

Spring Security provides the following built in mechanisms for reading a username and password from the HttpServletRequest:

Form Login
Basic Authentication
Digest Authentication

Storage Mechanisms

Each of the supported mechanisms for reading a username and password can leverage any of the supported storage mechanisms:

Simple Storage with In-Memory Authentication
Relational Databases with JDBC Authentication
Custom data stores with UserDetailsService
LDAP storage with LDAP Authentication