javax.security

Interface SecurityContext

public interface SecurityContext

The SecurityContext provides an access point for programmatic security; an injectable type that is intended to be used by application code to query and interact with the Java EE Security API.

Unless otherwise indicated, this type must be usable in all Java EE containers, specifically the Servlet and EJB containers.

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
AuthenticationStatus	authenticate(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationParameters parameters) Signal to the container (programmatically trigger) that it should start or continue a web/HTTP based authentication dialog with the caller.
Principal	getCallerPrincipal() Retrieve the java.security.Principal that represents the name of authenticated caller name, or null if the current caller is not authenticated.
boolean	hasAccessToWebResource(String resource) Checks whether the caller has access to the provided "web resource" using the GET HTTP method, such as specified by section 13.8 of the Servlet specification, and the JACC specification, specifically the WebResourcePermission type.
boolean	hasAccessToWebResource(String resource, String... methods) Checks whether the caller has access to the provided "web resource" using the given methods, such as specified by section 13.8 of the Servlet specification, and the JACC specification, specifically the WebResourcePermission type.
boolean	isCallerInRole(String role) Checks whether the authenticated caller is included in the specified logical application "role".

Method Detail

getCallerPrincipal

Principal getCallerPrincipal()

Retrieve the java.security.Principal that represents the name of authenticated caller name, or null if the current caller is not authenticated.

The Principal can be downcasted to the exact Principal type that was set by the HttpAuthenticationMechanism (possibly via an IdentityStore) or a JASPIC ServerAuthModule.

Returns:

Principal representing the name of the current authenticated user, or null if not authenticated.

isCallerInRole

boolean isCallerInRole(String role)

Checks whether the authenticated caller is included in the specified logical application "role". If the caller is not authenticated, this always returns false.

This method can not be used to test for roles that are mapped to specific named Servlets or named EJB beans. For a Servlet an example of this would be the role-name nested in a security-role-ref element nested in a servlet element in web.xml.

Should code in either such Servlet or EJB bean wish to take such mapped (aka referenced, linked) roles into account, the facilities for that specific container should be used instead. For instance for Servlet that would be HttpServletRequest.isUserInRole(String) and for EJB beans that would be EJBContext.isCallerInRole(String).

Parameters:

role - a String specifying the name of the logical application role

Returns:

true if the authenticated caller is in the given role, false if the caller is not authentication or is not in the given role.

hasAccessToWebResource

boolean hasAccessToWebResource(String resource)

Checks whether the caller has access to the provided "web resource" using the GET HTTP method, such as specified by section 13.8 of the Servlet specification, and the JACC specification, specifically the WebResourcePermission type.

A caller has access if the web resource is either not protected (constrained), or when it is protected by a role and the caller is in that role.

Parameters:

resource - the name of the web resource to test access for. This is a URLPatternSpec that identifies the application specific web resources to which the permission pertains. For a full specification of this pattern see WebResourcePermission.WebResourcePermission(String, String).

Returns:

true if the caller has access to the web resource, false otherwise.

hasAccessToWebResource

boolean hasAccessToWebResource(String resource,
                               String... methods)

Checks whether the caller has access to the provided "web resource" using the given methods, such as specified by section 13.8 of the Servlet specification, and the JACC specification, specifically the WebResourcePermission type.

A caller has access if the web resource is either not protected (constrained), or when it is protected by a role and the caller is in that role.

Parameters:

resource - the name of the web resource to test access for. This is a URLPatternSpec that identifies the application specific web resources to which the permission pertains. For a full specification of this pattern see WebResourcePermission.WebResourcePermission(String, String).

methods - one or more methods to check for whether the caller has access to the web resource using one of those methods.

Returns:

true if the caller has access to the web resource using one of the given methods, false otherwise.

authenticate

AuthenticationStatus authenticate(HttpServletRequest request,
                                  HttpServletResponse response,
                                  AuthenticationParameters parameters)

Signal to the container (programmatically trigger) that it should start or continue a web/HTTP based authentication dialog with the caller.

Programmatically triggering means that the container responds as if the caller had attempted to access a constrained resource and acts by invoking a configured authentication mechanism (such as the HttpAuthenticationMechanism).

Whether the authentication dialog is to be started or continued depends on the (logical) state of the authentication dialog. If such dialog is currently in progress, a call to this method will continue it. If such dialog is not in progress a new one will be started. A new dialog can be forced to be started regardless of one being in progress or not by providing a value of true for the AuthenticationParameters.newAuthentication parameter with this call.

This method requires an HttpServletRequest and HttpServletResponse argument to be passed in, and can therefore only be used in a valid Servlet context.

Parameters:

request - The HttpServletRequest associated with the current web resource invocation.

response - The HttpServletResponse associated with the given HttpServletRequest.

parameters - The parameters that are provided along with a programmatic authentication request, for instance the credentials. collected by the application for continuing an authentication dialog.

Returns:

the state of the authentication mechanism after being triggered by this call