Playframework with CSRF : “CSRF token not found in session”?

Question

I'm making a simple authentication system using Playframework with their built-in CSRF filter and Security.Authenticator system, but I'm facing a problem :

When the user fill his login/password and submit enter, I have the following error :

CSRF token not found in session

I checked my form and the CSRF token is really present and correctly placed (inside the tag)

Here is my routes :

GET     /login                      controllers.Authentication.login
POST    /login                      controllers.Authentication.authenticate

And my Authentication.java class :

@play.filters.csrf.AddCSRFToken
public static Result login() {
    if (Session.getAccount() != null) {
        return redirect(controllers.routes.Instances.list());
    }

    LoginForm loginForm = new LoginForm();
    if (ctx().session().containsKey("email")) {
        loginForm.setEmail(ctx().session().get("email"));
    }

    if (request().queryString().containsKey("disconnected")) {
        flash("warning", Messages.get("secure.logout")); // TODO : Warning flash message
    }

    Form<LoginForm> form = Form.form(LoginForm.class).fill(loginForm);
    return ok(views.html.login.render(form));
}

@play.filters.csrf.AddCSRFToken
@play.filters.csrf.RequireCSRFCheck
public static Result authenticate() {
    Form<LoginForm> form = Form.form(LoginForm.class).bindFromRequest();
    if (form.hasErrors()) {
        return badRequest(views.html.login.render(form));
    }

    LoginForm login = form.get();
    Account account = Account.findByEmail(login.getEmail());

    if (account == null || !account.checkPassword(login.getPassword())) {
        form.reject("email", "secure.invalid.login");
        return badRequest(views.html.login.render(form));
    }

    String next = null;
    if (ctx().session().containsKey("next")) {
        next = ctx().session().get("next");
        if ("".equals(next)) {
            next = null;
        }
    }

    session().clear();
    session("email", login.getEmail());

    if (next != null) {
        return redirect(next);
    } else {
        return redirect(controllers.routes.Instances.list());
    }
}

The properties I setted in the application.conf :

csrf.token.name="csrf"
csrf.sign.tokens=true

Here's my form (to show that the token is correctly positionned) :

<form action="@controllers.routes.Authentication.authenticate" method="post" class="form-vertical" role="form">
    <fieldset>
        @defining(form("email")) { element =>
        <div class="form-group fade-in two@if(element.hasErrors){ has-error}">
            <label class="control-label" for="login-form-@element.name">Email:</label>
            <input type="email" name="@element.name" id="login-form-@element.name" class="form-control" value="@element.value" placeholder="Enter your email" required />
            @element.errors.map { error => <span class="help-block">@play.i18n.Messages.get(error.message)</span>}
        </div>}
        @defining(form("password")) { element =>
        <div class="form-group fade-in three@if(element.hasErrors){ has-error}">
            <label class="control-label" for="login-form-@element.name">Password:</label>
            <input type="password" name="@element.name" id="login-form-@element.name" class="form-control" value="@element.value" placeholder="Enter your password" required />
            @element.errors.map { error => <span class="help-block">@play.i18n.Messages.get(error.message)</span>}
        </div>}
        <div class="form-group actions fade-in four">
            <div class="text-right">
                <input type="submit" name="save" value="Sign me in" class="btn btn-primary" />
                @helper.CSRF.formField
            </div>
        </div>
    </fieldset>
</form>

Update 1: I removed all the @addCSRFToken and @requireCSRFToken and defined a global CSRF token instead, per @rhj recommandation. Now I got this error instead :

Invalid token found in form body

But as you can see in the HTML Form, the token is placed inside the form and should be identified!

Update 2: What bothers me the most, is that this problem only occurs in the Login page, and not elsewhere! Is there some session to enable first? I guess not but maybe ?!

Update 3: More odd, I just found out that if I change the value of csrf.token.name and reload the page, it works. Then if I log out, open a new page and try to logs again, it fails with the message Invalid token found in form body. If I again change the value of csrf.token.name and do it again, it will works again.

Update 4: I narrowed down the problem. I also use the play.mvc.Security.Authenticator and it seems that the token verification fails ONLY when I display the page after a redirect(). If I go straight to the login page, I won't have the error message displayed.

Final update! : I finally found the problem, it was in another class that I wasn't suspecting, that was called and cleared the session, making the token useless!

Answer 1

Finally the problem was located in an other part of my code that was cleaning the session in the login() method, removing the csrf token with it ...

Answer 2

Add the below line in Global.java

@Override
public <T extends EssentialFilter> Class<T>[] filters() {
    return new Class[]{CSRFFilter.class};
}

For this you have to import

import play.api.mvc.EssentialFilter;
import play.filters.csrf.CSRFFilter;

Hope this will help you