Despite my last email where I stated that I personally prefer the
composite principal approach for run-as, I think your approach is more
viable from a framework perspective since it doesn't force the realm
implementor to use any particular type of principal. In other words,
I'd think JSecurity would store the "actual" principal in the session
(as it does now), but could also store the "run-as" principal.
I also think we should add methods to the Subject that allow you to
access the "actual" principal (need a better name for that). The
current methods would just return the "run as" principal, if one exists.
I don't like the idea of adding another manager - I prefer to keep the
number of managers in jsecurity to a minimum, since it adds one more
layer that people may need to traverse to get to what they need. I
think "run as" is a core enough feature that it can be supported in
the core security manager.
I agree that you need to be able to change the run-as user at
runtime. I think the only way to get at the "actual" user's principal
would be through new methods we'd add to the Subject class.
On Dec 15, 2008, at 2:10 PM, Les Hazlewood wrote:
This email thread: http://markmail.org/message/wr6bzfsnf74hoaby
has spurred my curiosity. I really think Assumed Identity / Run As
should
be part of the core framework. Especially as a 1.0 feature.
I'm thinking that my approach to the solution could easily be
incorporated
into JSecurity as a top-level feature. Instead of modifying a
sessions
table as I do in my own applications, because we can't guarantee that
approach for any application, could we just store the assumed
identity as a
session attribute?
But, before we go down the road of any solution, I want to ask:
1. Would my solution be optimal from a framework perspective?
2. Would keeping the information as another Principal, instead of the
session, be a viable approach? Would it be better than storing it
in the
session? Maybe more secure? (I don't know).
I just thought of #2 a bit more. If we decide that #2 is a better
solution
than using the Session, we have to understand that every Principal is
inherently tied to a Realm, so how would we go about setting that
identity?
How would we empower a Realm implementor to achieve this
functionality in
the easiest possible manner?
I think we need to support assuming an identity not just during
login, but
at any time during the life of the 'owning' user's interaction with
the
system. Likewise relinquishing the assumed identity should be able
to be
done at any time as well.
Whatever the approach, I think the framework solution should be
transparent
as possible, so the GUI developers don't have to change code. That an
identity is assumed should be purely transparent to any use of the
JSecurity
API, IMO.
What do you guys think? How do you think we should go about this?
Les
