| This interface defines the methods that classes with
Credentials functionalities have to implement.
Credentials contain the information that is required to verify if a user
is valid and known to the system. They are the basic building blocks of the
authentication mechanism.
Credentials can contain any data, they just have to be able
to validate the contents of the provided data. For example enforce limits
on the length of passwords, verify the accepted characters in logins, check
the numeric requirements of identifiers, and so on.
This is different from the validation of the credentials themselves (ie.
checking if they're known by the system and can be authenticated) since
that is performed by a
CredentialsManager .
author:
Geert Bevin (gbevin[remove] at uwyn dot com)
version:
$Revision: 3643 $
See Also: CredentialsManager
since:
1.0 |