Headless Magnolia: REST Endpoint Security and CORS
Aug. 5, 2021
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Security Configuration and CORS 1200x628

Headless Magnolia: REST Endpoint Security and CORS

If you want to learn about Magnolia’s take on headless content management but don't know where to start, you've come to the right place. As part of our “Headless Magnolia” series, we’ll break down relevant features that allow you to use Magnolia as a headless CMS. In this article, we’ll discuss REST endpoint security and CORS.

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REST endpoint security

REST endpoints are a powerful tool but if wrongly secured, they can expose a site to unauthorized access. To safeguard your data, Magnolia blocks all access over REST by default, including published and publicly available website data.

There is nothing wrong with granting anonymous access to public data, for example, allowing a SPA or another front end to fetch it. You can selectively give anonymous access to specific endpoints or configure user-based access using "basic" HTTP authentication"basic" HTTP authentication.

When a REST request is issued, three levels of control apply:

  • Web access

  • JCR access

The permissions for REST endpoints are managed in the Security app using Magnolia’s role-based access control.

Access management

Magnolia’s access management system provides the means to sign in to applications and authenticates users to verify their identity. It also authorizes users to perform actions such as editing pages, ensuring they have the required permissions.

The Security app is used to manage system access by administering users, user groups, and user roles.

1 roles

You can change your system’s security settings in two ways:

  • Modify an existing role

  • Create a new role and assign it to an existing user user

Web access

Web access is checked for every endpoint. The filter checks if the user’s roles allow the user to request a given path using a given method.

Web permissions are granted to roles as web access lists:

  • Get: Grants the HTTP method GET for a given URI.

  • Get & Post: Grants the HTTP methods GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE for a given URI.

By default, Magnolia has a ‘rest-anonymous’ role that is assigned to the ‘anonymous’ system user. Any request that is not explicitly authorized uses this user. The rest-anonymous role grants Get permissions for Magnolia’s content delivery REST API:

2 rest-anonymous

Tip: Magnolia has a default user role called ‘rest-anonymous’. It grants the anonymous user access to the /.rest/delivery/* path. To fetch data from the delivery endpoint, use ‘delivery’ as part of the endpoint path.

Headless Magnolia: The Delivery Endpoint API

The Headless Magnolia series explains how to use Magnolia as a headless CMS. Use the Delivery endpoint API to consume content and assets from any front end.

JCR access

JCR access security is a feature of the JCR standard and applies to every endpoint that reads or writes JCR data.

You can grant Read-only or Read/Write permissions to a role per workspace on path level.

3 rest-anonymous

Tip: To bypass JCR security, you can set the endpoint configuration property ‘bypassWorkspaceAcls’ to true. Use this property with care and for development purposes only.

CORS

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that uses HTTP headers to instruct browsers to load resources from another origin (domain, protocol, or port) than the original one.

The following CORS filters are available in Magnolia 6.2.4 and up:

  • Global CORS filter ‘SelfConfiguredCorsFilter’

  • Site-aware CORS filter ‘SiteAwareCorsFilter’

Filters are specified in the Magnolia filter chain in the Configuration app under /server/filters/cors.

4 configuration

Global CORS filter

The SelfConfiguredCorsFilter is a global CORS filter and its properties are configured in the server, for example:

Java
  server:
 filters:
   cors:
     class: info.magnolia.cors.SelfConfiguredCorsFilter
     uris:
       rest:
         patternString: /.rest/*
     allowedOrigins:
       - https://example.com
       - https://magnolia-cms.com
     allowedMethods:
       - GET
       - OPTIONS
       - POST
     allowedHeaders:
       - '*'

Site-aware CORS filter

In a multisite setup, a SiteAwareCorsFilter is configured separately for each site in the Site app or under /modules/multisite/config/sites/<site-name>/cors, for example:

Java
  modules:
 multisite:
   config:
     sites:
       travel:
         cors:
           travel:
             uris:
               rest:
                 patternString: /.rest/*
             allowedOrigins:
               - '*'
             allowedMethods:
               - GET
             allowedHeaders:
               - Accept
               - Content-Type
               - Origin
               - X-PINGOTHER
               - X-Requested-With

If you are using a SiteAwareCorsFilter, make sure it is also configured in the server:

Java
  server:
 filters:
   cors:
     class: info.magnolia.module.site.filters.SiteAwareCorsFilter

Learn more about Magnolia’s headless features

This Headless Magnolia series will cover the following topics:

  1. The Delivery Endpoint API

  2. REST Endpoint Security and CORS (you are here)

  3. Configuring SPAs for Editing in Magnolia

  4. Building a Basic SPA Using Magnolia Templates

  5. Virtual URI Mapping

  6. Nodes Endpoint API and Commands Endpoint API

  7. Inheritance in Headless Magnolia

Über den autor

Bartosz Staryga

Front-End Solution Architect, Magnolia

Bartosz is an expert in headless content management and front-end development at Magnolia. He designs and develops new Magnolia features and supports customers with their headless implementations from content types to APIs to integrations. Bartosz enjoys building new things and seeing them in action. He is also a trainer for Magnolia’s Headless training.