Sun Java System Access Manager Policy Agent 2.2 Guide for IBM WebSphere Portal Server 5.1.0.2

Methods for Fetching Attributes in J2EE Agents

The attribute types can be fetched by different methods as follows:

Fetching Attributes as HTTP Headers

When the agent is configured to provide the LDAP attributes as HTTP headers, these attributes can be retrieved using the following methods on the javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest interface:

long getDateHeader(java.lang.String name)

java.lang.String getHeader(java.lang.String name)

java.util.Enumeration getHeaderNames()

java.util.Enumeration getHeaders(java.lang.String name)

int getIntHeader(java.lang.String name)

The property that controls the parsing of a date value from an appropriate string as set in the LDAP attribute is the following:

com.sun.identity.agents.config.attribute.date.format

This property defaults to the value EEE, d MMM yyyy hh:mm:ss z and should be changed as necessary.

Multi-valued attributes can be retrieved as an instance of java.util.Enumeration from the following method:

java.util.Enumeration getHeaders(java.lang.String name)

Fetching Attributes as Request Attributes

When the agent is configured to provide the LDAP attributes as request attributes, the agent populates these attribute values into the HttpServletRequest as attributes that can later be used by the application as necessary. These attributes are populated as java.util.Set objects, which must be cast to this type before they can be successfully used.

Fetching Attributes as Cookies

When the agent is configured to provide the LDAP attributes as cookies, the necessary values are set as server specific cookies by the agent with the path specified as “/.”

Multi-valued attributes are set as a single cookie value in a manner that all values of the attribute are concatenated into a single string using a separator character that can be specified by the following configuration entry:

com.sun.identity.agents.config.attribute.cookie.separator

One of the tasks of the application is to parse this value back into the individual values to ensure the correct interpretation of the multi-valued LDAP attributes for the logged on user.

When you are fetching attributes as cookies, also use the cookie reset functionality to ensure that these cookies get cleaned up from the client browser when the client browser’s session expires. For more information, see Using Cookie Reset Functionality in J2EE Agents.