Spring Security: SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication() returns null after user registering user and redirecting to after login page

Question

After user is registered successfully, i am trying to redirect user to after login page and trying to get the Active user from SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication(); which is returning null.

Here is how i am setting context when user is successfully registered

 UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken authenticatedUser = new UsernamePasswordAuthenticationToken(userDetails.getUsername(), userDetails.getPassword(), userDetails.getAuthorities());
 authenticatedUser.setDetails(userDetails);

 if(authenticatedUser.isAuthenticated()) {
        SecurityContextHolder.getContext().setAuthentication(authenticatedUser);
 }

Then i am redirecting user to x page using response.sendRedirect(url);

In the controller method i am trying to the current user as

@RequestMapping("/<pattern>")
public @ResponseBody <method_name>(HttpServletRequest req,HttpServletResponse resp){
     Authentication auth = SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication();
        if(auth==null){
            System.out.println("this is null");
        }
        else{
          // do something
        }
}

I am seeing the text in console as "this is null".

How to get retain the currentuser/Principal from SecurityContext() through out the user period till user logs out.

Answer 1

I got the solution.

The problem was with the pattern attribute for the tag for that specific URI group.

Earlier it was /path/* and it was failing. I changed it to /path/** and it worked.

It would be helpful if someone can explain between these two pattern matching(/* and /**).