ACEGI's current ~AuthenticationProcessFilter default setup will redirect a user to the login page, if they are not authenticated to the system. Once authenticated, the system will forward the user back to the initial url where they needed to be authenticated. If the user came directly from the login page, and there was no authentication error to forward the user to, the system will send the user to the default target url. This default target url has been defined in the ACEGI xml configuration file as property defaultTargetUrl.

So if the user was not logged into the system, and tried to access the http://localhost/admin/home.jsp, they will be forwarded to the login page. Once the user has logged into the system, the default setup will forward the user back to http://localhost/admin/home.jsp.

Well this seems to work great for me most of the time, but I have found situations where I do not want this to be my default behavior. You might want the user to always be sent to a default page after the user has logged into the system. In a simple application I am doing, I want the user to be sent to a default action, after signing into the system. This result is desired, so that I can preform some extra validation, and then forward the user to a signup page if necessary.

To achieve this, all you have to do is put the property of alwaysUseDefaultTargetUrl in your xml config file and set the value to true. The property is set to false by default.

Here is a example of how my ACEGI xml config file now looks with the alwaysUseDefaultTargetUrl set to true.

<bean id="authenticationProcessingFilter" class="org.acegisecurity.ui.webapp.AuthenticationProcessingFilter">
   <property name="authenticationManager" ref="authenticationManager"/>
   <property name="authenticationFailureUrl" value="/login.jsp?login_error=1"/>
   <property name="defaultTargetUrl" value="/eligibility.action"/>
   <property name="filterProcessesUrl" value="/j_acegi_security_check"/>
   <property name="rememberMeServices" ref="rememberMeServices"/>
   <property name="alwaysUseDefaultTargetUrl" value="true"/>
</bean>