Difference between @PreAuthorized and @RolesAllowed Annotations in Spring Security

An essential security annotation and interview questions

Hello guys, in today’s increasingly connected world, security play a very important role and Java developers cannot shy away from that responsibility.

While Java developers are not cyber security expert, they have to do their part in protecting their application.

This is also an important topic on Java developer interview so knowing how to protect Java application is quite important for both intermediate and senior developers.

For example, in Java programming and backend application development security plays a pivotal role in safeguarding applications from unauthorized access and malicious activities.

And, when it comes to framework, Spring security ruled.

I have worked on multiple Java projects and to ensure proper control over access rights, Java developers often utilize annotations, such as @PreAuthorized and @RolesAllowed of Spring Security framework.

Earlier, I have shared spring boot interview questions and talked about difference between @JPARepository and @CrudRepository in Spring Data and In this post, we will explore the functionality of both annotations, their differences, and use real-world and programming examples to illustrate their significance.

By the way, if you are preparing for spring boot interview and want to prepare more questions like this then you can also checkout my book Grokking the Spring Boot Interview, you can also use code friends30 to get 30% discount

In the book, I have not just covered Spring security but also Spring Boot and other spring framework topics which are important for Java developers.

1. @PreAuthorized Annotation

The @PreAuthorized annotation is part of the Spring Security framework, which is widely used to implement security features in Java applications.