org.osgi.service.useradmin
Interface Authorization

public interface Authorization

The Authorization interface encapsulates an authorization context on which bundles can base authorization decisions, where appropriate.

Bundles associate the privilege to access restricted resources or operations with roles. Before granting access to a restricted resource or operation, a bundle will check if the Authorization object passed to it possess the required role, by calling its hasRole method.

Authorization contexts are instantiated by calling the UserAdmin.getAuthorization(org.osgi.service.useradmin.User) method.

Trusting Authorization objects

There are no restrictions regarding the creation of Authorization objects. Hence, a service must only accept Authorization objects from bundles that has been authorized to use the service using code based (or Java 2) permissions.

In some cases it is useful to use ServicePermission to do the code based access control. A service basing user access control on Authorization objects passed to it, will then require that a calling bundle has the ServicePermission to get the service in question. This is the most convenient way. The OSGi environment will do the code based permission check when the calling bundle attempts to get the service from the service registry.

Example: A servlet using a service on a user's behalf. The bundle with the servlet must be given the ServicePermission to get the Http Service.

However, in some cases the code based permission checks need to be more fine-grained. A service might allow all bundles to get it, but require certain code based permissions for some of its methods.

Example: A servlet using a service on a user's behalf, where some service functionality is open to anyone, and some is restricted by code based permissions. When a restricted method is called (e.g., one handing over an Authorization object), the service explicitly checks that the calling bundle has permission to make the call.

Method Summary

java.lang.String	getName() Gets the name of the User that this Authorization context was created for.
java.lang.String[]	getRoles() Gets the names of all roles implied by this Authorization context.
boolean	hasRole(java.lang.String name) Checks if the role with the specified name is implied by this Authorization context.

Method Detail

getName

public java.lang.String getName()

Gets the name of the User that this Authorization context was created for.

Returns:

The name of the User object that this Authorization context was created for, or null if no user was specified when this Authorization context was created.

hasRole

public boolean hasRole(java.lang.String name)

Checks if the role with the specified name is implied by this Authorization context.

Bundles must define globally unique role names that are associated with the privilege of accessing restricted resources or operations. Operators will grant users access to these resources, by creating a Group object for each role and adding User objects to it.

Parameters:

name - The name of the role to check for.

Returns:

true if this Authorization context implies the specified role, otherwise false.

getRoles

public java.lang.String[] getRoles()

Gets the names of all roles implied by this Authorization context.

Returns:

The names of all roles implied by this Authorization context, or null if no roles are in the context. The predefined role user.anyone will not be included in this list.