As part of your ATG application, you may find it useful to encode or encrypt sensitive information that is stored in properties files. Encoding can be performed using the atg.core.util.Base64 class, or another method you prefer.
You must then be able to access the encrypted information. The atg.nucleus.PropertyValueDecoder class defines a component that can decode the value of properties encoded using Base64 (no other standards are currently supported out of the box). You can use a component of this type if you need to protect properties that should remain encoded until their value is used; for example, DataSource components can use a PropertyValueDecoder component to decrypt user and password properties before using them to create a database connection. These sensitive pieces of information are protected in the DataSource’s .properties file until they’re needed.
To use PropertyValueDecoder, you must modify your original component to use the decoder for the property you have encoded. Do not make the decoded value visible to any public method or property. The PropertyValueDecoder’s decode() method should be called and its return value used directly (apart from type casting). This allows your component to use different implementations of the PropertyValueDecoder interface without modification.
Out of the box, the atg.service.jdbc.FakeXADataSource class supports this feature. To use it, create an atg.service.jdbc.SimpleLoginDecoder component (which implements PropertyValueDecoder) called MySimpleLoginDecoder. Set the loginDecoder property of FakeXADataSource to MySimpleLoginDecoder. You can then set the values of the user and password properties in FakeXADataSource with Base64-encoded values, and rely on the decoder to pass the decoded login to the database when connections are created.
If you need more robust security, you might subclass LoginDecoder and override it’s decode() methods, or implement your own PropertyValueDecoder to accommodate that need.
