BEA WebLogic Server 9.1 API Reference

weblogic.security.service
Interface ContextHandler

All Known Implementing Classes:

SecurityTokenContextHandler

public interface ContextHandler

The ContextHandler interface provides a way for an internal Weblogic container to pass additional information to a WebLogic Security Framework call, so that a security provider can obtain additional context information beyond what is provided by the arguments to a particular method. A ContextHandler is essentially a name/value list and as such, it requires a security provider to know what names to look for (that is, use of a ContextHandler requires close cooperation between the Weblogic container and a security provider). The name/value list is also called a context element, and is represented by a ContextElement object.

A ContextHandler argument is passed into the isAccessAllowed method of an AccessDecision, so you can view this method as an example. As another example, if one was attempting to access a file in a directory, the name of that file could be passed through a ContextHandler object.

Copyright © 2005 BEA Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Method Summary

String[]	getNames() Gets a list of ContextElement names that can be requested.
Object	getValue(String name) Gets a value for the specified ContextElement name.
ContextElement[]	getValues(String[] names) Gets an array of ContextElement objects containing values for each of the named elements that are known.
int	size() Provides a count of the number of ContextElements that the handler is able to return.

Method Detail

getNames

public String[] getNames()

Gets a list of ContextElement names that can be requested.

Returns:

the names of the ContextElements that can be requested, represented as an array of Strings.

getValue

public Object getValue(String name)

Gets a value for the specified ContextElement name.

Parameters:

name - the name of the ContextElement for which a value should be returned, represented as a String.

Returns:

an Object that contains the value of the requested name. If the value of the name parameter is unknown, a null value is returned.

getValues

public ContextElement[] getValues(String[] names)

Gets an array of ContextElement objects containing values for each of the named elements that are known.

Parameters:

names - the names of the ContextElements to be returned, represented as an array of Strings.

Returns:

an array containing a ContextElement object for each of the named elements found in the names parameter. The value for the requested element is returned as a java.lang.Object. As a result, the caller must know the data type of the value.

If a name in the names parameter is unknown, the name will not appear in the array of ContextElement objects.

size

public int size()

Provides a count of the number of ContextElements that the handler is able to return.

Returns:

the number of ContextElements that can be requested. A value of -1 indicates that the handler is unable to return the exact count.