Dynamic Role Management in Firebird and Spring Boot

January 23, 2026

#1

Dynamic Role Management allows administrators to update permissions and assign roles at runtime without restarting the app. Let’s build it using Firebird and Spring Boot.

1. Add Dependencies

Include the following dependencies in pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.firebirdsql.jdbc</groupId>
  <artifactId>jaybird</artifactId>
  <version>5.0.3</version>
</dependency>

2. Configure Firebird Connection

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:firebirdsql://localhost:3050/D:/data/firebird_roles.fdb
spring.datasource.username=sysdba
spring.datasource.password=masterkey
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update

3. Define Entities

@Entity
public class Role {
    @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private String name;
    private String description;
}

@Entity
public class User {
    @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
    private Long id;
    private String username;
    private String password;
    @ManyToMany(fetch = FetchType.EAGER)
    private Set<Role> roles;
}

4. Create Role Management APIs

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/roles")
public class RoleController {

    @Autowired
    private RoleRepository roleRepo;
    @Autowired
    private UserRepository userRepo;

    @PostMapping("/add")
    public Role addRole(@RequestBody Role role) {
        return roleRepo.save(role);
    }

    @PostMapping("/assign/{userId}/{roleId}")
    public String assignRole(@PathVariable Long userId, @PathVariable Long roleId) {
        User user = userRepo.findById(userId).orElseThrow();
        Role role = roleRepo.findById(roleId).orElseThrow();
        user.getRoles().add(role);
        userRepo.save(user);
        return "Role assigned successfully";
    }
}

5. Load Roles Dynamically in Security

@Service
public class CustomUserDetailsService implements UserDetailsService {
    @Autowired private UserRepository userRepo;

    @Override
    public UserDetails loadUserByUsername(String username) {
        User user = userRepo.findByUsername(username)
            .orElseThrow(() -> new UsernameNotFoundException("User not found"));
        var authorities = user.getRoles()
            .stream()
            .map(r -> new SimpleGrantedAuthority("ROLE_" + r.getName()))
            .toList();
        return new org.springframework.security.core.userdetails.User(
            user.getUsername(), user.getPassword(), authorities);
    }
}

6. Security Configuration

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class SecurityConfig {

    @Bean
    public SecurityFilterChain filterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        return http
            .csrf().disable()
            .authorizeHttpRequests()
            .requestMatchers("/admin/**").hasRole("ADMIN")
            .requestMatchers("/roles/**").hasRole("ADMIN")
            .anyRequest().authenticated()
            .and()
            .httpBasic()
            .and()
            .build();
    }
}

7. Testing Dynamic Role Updates

• Create roles via /roles/add (e.g., ADMIN, USER).
• Assign a role to a user via /roles/assign/{userId}/{roleId}.
• The user can access new endpoints without restarting the server — roles are loaded dynamically from Firebird.