JCaptcha Plugin
JCaptcha
JCaptcha is an open source (LGPL) captcha solution. JCaptcha provides visual and audio challenges and could be extended to provide different kinds of challenges if you desire.
The Plugin
The Grails JCaptcha plugin provides an easy way to define Captchas, display them and verify the response.
Installation
The plugin is available from the official repository so can be installed via ...
grails install-plugin jcaptcha
Usage
Defining Captchas
Captchas are defined in the grails-app/conf/Config.groovy file.
log4j {
/* log4j config */
}
jcaptchas {
captcha1 = ...
captcha2 = ...
}
Each jcaptcha.* entry must be an instance of CaptchaService which is responsible for generating challenges and verifying responses.
Some example Captchas ...
import java.awt.Font import java.awt.Color import com.octo.captcha.service.multitype.GenericManageableCaptchaService import com.octo.captcha.engine.GenericCaptchaEngine import com.octo.captcha.image.gimpy.GimpyFactory import com.octo.captcha.component.word.wordgenerator.RandomWordGenerator import com.octo.captcha.component.image.wordtoimage.ComposedWordToImage import com.octo.captcha.component.image.fontgenerator.RandomFontGenerator import com.octo.captcha.component.image.backgroundgenerator.GradientBackgroundGenerator import com.octo.captcha.component.image.color.SingleColorGenerator import com.octo.captcha.component.image.textpaster.NonLinearTextPaster import com.octo.captcha.service.sound.DefaultManageableSoundCaptchaService jcaptchas { imageCaptcha = new GenericManageableCaptchaService( new GenericCaptchaEngine( new GimpyFactory( new RandomWordGenerator( "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890" ), new ComposedWordToImage( new RandomFontGenerator( 20, // min font size 30, // max font size [new Font("Arial", 0, 10)] as Font[] ), new GradientBackgroundGenerator( 140, // width 35, // height new SingleColorGenerator(new Color(0, 60, 0)), new SingleColorGenerator(new Color(20, 20, 20)) ), new NonLinearTextPaster( 6, // minimal length of text 6, // maximal length of text new Color(0, 255, 0) ) ) ) ), 180, // minGuarantedStorageDelayInSeconds 180000 // maxCaptchaStoreSize ) soundCaptcha = new DefaultManageableSoundCaptchaService() }
Construction/configuration of captcha services is part of JCaptcha itself so refer to the JCaptcha documentation on that.
JCaptcha Controller
The plugin installs a controller called 'JCaptchaController'. It's function is to render captcha challenges. It currently supports two rendering formats: jpeg and wav.
The controller supports URIs like jcaptcha/jpeg/<captchaname> and jcaptcha/wav/<captchaname> which will write the binary output to the output stream.
| You can't render images as WAV Make sure that you don't try and render image captchas as sound or vice versa. If you attempt this you will get an IllegalArgumentException. |
JCaptcha Tags
The plugin makes tags available for jpeg and wav challenges.
<jcaptcha:jpeg name="<captchaname>" height="Xpx" width="Xpx" /> // results in an img tag <jcaptcha:wav name="<captchaname>" autostart="0" /> // results in an embed tag
You can pass any other attributes that are accepted by the underlying HTML tags to the tags.
JCaptcha Service
The JCaptchaService class is responsible for obtaining the instances of CaptchaService defined in your config. It is also used for verifying responses to challenges.
class ExampleController
{
def jcaptchaService
def index = {
if (jcaptchaService.validateResponse("captchaName", session.id, params.captchaResponse))
{
/* User entered response correctly
}
else
{
/* User got it wrong, OR THEY ARE A BOT!!!! Let's get em.
}
}
}
Notice that you need to pass session.id to validateResponse. This is because the captcha service needs to match the response to the challenge to check the answer. The key between the two is session.id.
Example Application
Here is a fully functional example application that uses the JCaptcha plugin.

