1 /* 2 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one 3 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file 4 * distributed with this work for additional information 5 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file 6 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 7 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance 8 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 9 * 10 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 11 * 12 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, 13 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an 14 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY 15 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the 16 * specific language governing permissions and limitations 17 * under the License. 18 */ 19 package org.apache.shiro.authc; 20 21 /** 22 * <p>An extension of the {@link AuthenticationInfo} interface to be implemented by 23 * classes that support merging with other {@link AuthenticationInfo} instances.</p> 24 * 25 * <p>This allows an instance of this class to be an <em>aggregation</em>, or <em>composition</em> of account data 26 * from across multiple <code>Realm</code>s <tt>Realm</tt>s, not just one realm.</p> 27 * 28 * <p>This is useful in a multi-realm authentication configuration - the individual <tt>AuthenticationInfo</tt> 29 * objects obtained from each realm can be {@link #merge merged} into a single instance. This instance can then be 30 * returned at the end of the authentication process, giving the impression of a single underlying 31 * realm/data source. 32 * 33 * @since 0.9 34 */ 35 public interface MergableAuthenticationInfo extends AuthenticationInfo { 36 37 /** 38 * Merges the given {@link AuthenticationInfo} into this instance. The specific way 39 * that the merge occurs is up to the implementation, but typically it involves combining 40 * the principals and credentials together in this instance. The <code>info</code> argument should 41 * not be modified in any way. 42 * 43 * @param info the info that should be merged into this instance. 44 */ 45 void merge(AuthenticationInfo info); 46 47 }