Contract Management System

A Spring Boot backend application designed to manage legal contracts through a secure consultancy workflow.

The system implements role-based and ownership-based access control to ensure that users can only access contracts they are authorized to view. Clients can manage their own contracts, consultants can review and approve contracts assigned to them, and administrators can oversee workflow progress without accessing confidential contract content.

In addition to contract management, the application supports document parsing using Apache Tika and provides contract question-answering through keyword-based retrieval from extracted contract text.

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Overview

Legal contracts often contain sensitive information that should only be accessible to specific stakeholders. This project focuses on enforcing those access boundaries throughout the entire contract lifecycle.

Key security rules include:

• Clients can only access, update, download, and query their own contracts.
• Consultants can only access contracts assigned to them.
• Administrators can monitor contract workflow and user activity without viewing contract contents.
• Every contract retrieval request validates both user role and contract ownership/assignment before data is returned.
• Unauthorized access attempts result in application-level exceptions and access denial.

Beyond access control, the system supports:

• Secure JWT-based authentication
• Contract upload and storage
• Document text extraction using Apache Tika
• Contract lifecycle management (Draft → Review → Approved)
• Contract question-answering using keyword-based retrieval
• File download and document management
• MongoDB-based persistence

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Key Features

Authentication & Security

• JWT-based Authentication
• Spring Security Integration
• Stateless Session Management
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Ownership-based contract access validation
• Users can only access resources permitted by their role and ownership rules

Supported Roles:

• ADMIN
• CONSULTANT
• CLIENT

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Contract Management

• Upload PDF/DOCX contracts
• Update contract details
• Retrieve contracts
• Download uploaded contract files
• Track and Update contract status
• Store metadata in MongoDB
• Store uploaded files locally

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Document Processing

• Text extraction using Apache Tika
• Extracted content stored for retrieval
• Contract Question & Answer functionality
• Keyword-based answer retrieval from extracted contract text

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Workflow Management

Contracts move through the following lifecycle:

DRAFT
   ↓
REVIEW
   ↓
APPROVED

This workflow ensures contracts are reviewed and approved before completion.

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Security Architecture

   Client Request
         │
         ▼
Spring Security Filter Chain
         │
         ▼
JWT Authentication Filter
         │
         ▼
    Security Context
         │
         ▼
Role & Ownership Validation
         │
         ▼
   Controller Layer
         │
         ▼
    Service Layer
         │
         ▼
MongoDB / File Storage

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Role Permissions

Admin

• View contracts status across the system
• View consultants
• View clients
• Assign consultant roles
• Monitor contract workflow

Consultant

• View assigned contracts
• Review assigned contracts
• Approve assigned contracts
• Download assigned contract files
• Ask questions from assigned contract content

Client

• Upload contracts
• Update own contracts
• View own contracts
• Download own contracts
• Ask questions from own uploaded contracts

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Document Processing Flow for Q&A

Upload Contract
       │
       ▼
Store File Locally
       │
       ▼
Apache Tika Extraction
       │
       ▼
Store Extracted Text
       │
       ▼
Contract Q&A Retrieval

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Technology Stack

Backend

• Java 21
• Spring Boot 3
• Spring Web
• Spring Security
• Spring Validation

Database

• MongoDB
• Spring Data MongoDB

Document Processing

• Apache Tika

Build Tools

• Maven
• Lombok

Authentication

• JWT (JSON Web Token)

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Project Structure

src/main/java/com/contractmanagementsystem
├── controller
├── dto
├── exception
├── model
├── repository
├── security
├── service
├── utils
└── ContractManagementSystemApplication.java

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Sample API Groups

Authentication

POST /auth/register
POST /auth

Client Operations

POST /client
PUT /client/{id}
GET /client
GET /client/{id}
POST /client/{id}/ask

Consultant Operations

GET /consultant
GET /consultant/{id}
PUT /consultant/updateStatusToReview/{id}
PUT /consultant/updateStatusToApproved/{id}

Admin Operations

GET /admin/getAllContracts
PUT /admin/{id}

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Question & Answer Example

Request

What are the payment terms?

Response

{
  "contractId": "contract-id",
  "contractName": "Rent Contract",
  "question": "What are the payment terms?",
  "answer": "Matched contract content...",
  "score": 2
}

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Setup & Installation

Clone Repository

git clone https://github.com/mansisharma011/Contract-Management-System.git
cd Contract-Management-System

Configure MongoDB

spring.data.mongodb.uri=mongodb://localhost:27017/contract_db

Configure JWT Secret

jwt.secret=YOUR_BASE64_SECRET_KEY

Run Application

Windows:

mvnw.cmd spring-boot:run

Linux/macOS:

./mvnw spring-boot:run

Application runs on:

http://localhost:8080

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Future Improvements

• LLM-powered Contract Q&A using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Semantic Search using Vector Embeddings
• OpenAPI / Swagger Documentation
• Unit & Integration Testing
• Pagination & Filtering
• Cloud File Storage (AWS S3)
• Contract Versioning
• Audit Logging

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Author

Mansi Sharma

Java Backend Developer | Spring Boot | MongoDB | Spring Security | REST APIs