weblogic.security.spi
Interface AccessDecision

public interface AccessDecision

The AccessDecision interface defines the security service provider interface (SSPI) for policy enforcement points (PEP) that can be plugged into WebLogic Server.

An implementation of the AccessDecision interface is the part of an Authorization provider that indicates whether to allow (permit) or deny the processing of the requested method. As such, it must return a Result. If the Access Decision does not understand the type of resource being requested, the Access Decision is responsible for indicating that it will abstain from making a decision.

An Access Decision based on this interface may be called both prior to a request and after a request has been processed. Thus, the implementation must be stateless and not assume that any authorization check performed prior to allowing a request to be processed will have a corresponding authorization check after the request has been processed.

The Access Decision based on this interface must implement the two built-in groups: "users" and "everyone". All subjects are members of the "everyone" group and all non-anonymous subjects (that is, subjects with one or more principals) are members of the "users" group.

isAccessAllowed

Result isAccessAllowed(Subject subject,
                       Map roles,
                       Resource resource,
                       ContextHandler handler,
                       Direction direction)
                       throws InvalidPrincipalException

Indicates whether the authorization policies defined for the resource allow the requested method to be performed, by utilizing the information contained in the subject.

The isAccessAllowed method may be called both prior to a request and after a request has been processed. An indication of whether the method is being called 1) to determine if the request should be allowed to be dispatched or 2) to determine if the result of request should be allowed to be returned is represented by the value of the direction parameter.

Parameters:

subject - a Subject object containing the identity of the principals that are attempting to perform a request on the specified resource.

roles - a Map of roles (indexed by their names) that are associated with the subject and should be taken into consideration when making the authorization decision.

resource - a Resource object indicating the type of resource on which the subject is attempting to perform a request.

handler - a ContextHandler object that can optionally be used by an Access Decision to obtain additional information that may be used in making the authorization decision. If the caller is unable to provide additional information, a null value should be specified.

direction - a Direction object representing whether the authorization check is being performed prior to processing the request or after the request has been processed but before the results have been returned. A value of PRIOR indicates that the authorization check is being requested prior to processing the request. A value of POST indicates that the authorization check is being requested after the request has been processed but before the results have been returned. A value of ONCE indicates that the authorization check is being done once. isAccessAllowed uses the direction to give it some indication as to which parameters to request (in or out) in the ContextHandler.

Returns:

an indication of whether the authorization policies defined for the resource allow the requested method to be performed. A return value of PERMIT indicates that the specified subject has permission to perform the operation. A return value of DENY indicates that the specified subject should not be allowed to perform the operation on the resource. A value of ABSTAIN indicates that an explicit decision to either permit or deny the requested method could not be determined.

Throws:

InvalidPrincipalException - if the principal has become invalid (possibly because the principal has been deleted from the system while there was an active subject with that principal).

isProtectedResource

boolean isProtectedResource(Subject subject,
                            Resource resource)
                            throws InvalidPrincipalException

Determines if the specified resource is protected against access by unauthenticated principals.

The isProtectedResource method does not compute the set of roles that may be granted to the caller's subject. As a result, it provides a light-weight mechanism to determine if the resource is protected.

Parameters:

subject - a Subject object containing the identity of the principals that are attempting to perform a request on the specified resource.

resource - a Resource object indicating the type of resource on which the subject is attempting to perform a request.

Returns:

a boolean value indicating whether the resource is protected against unauthenticated access. A value of TRUE indicates the resource is protected; a value of FALSE indicates that the resource is not protected.

Throws:

InvalidPrincipalException - if the principal has become invalid (possibly because the principal has been deleted from the system while there was an active subject with that principal).