I am using Tomcat 5 (I think) as a servlet and web service container via
JWSDP 1.2. My OS is Windows XP Professional SP 2.
I have written a centralized authentication service which uses a pluggable
authentication module architecture. Each authentication module derives from
an abstract base class com.inmezzo.authn.logon.Logon which is contained in a
JAR file called inMezzo_AuthnLogon.jar, copied to common/lib. I supply a
number of authentication modules (Win32, LDAP and others) with the service.
These are in a package called com.inmezzo.authn.server and are contained in
a WAR in webapps and they all work fine.
However, the general pattern is that custom authentication modules will use
a completely different package hierarchy and will be stored in their own JAR
files in common/lib. This, however, causes problems.
When my web app loads, the following code is executed (note that much of it
is used simply to provide debug output for this post):
String aClassName = m_props.getProperty("authenticator",
"com.inmezzo.authn.server.NullLogon");
try
{
Class aClass = Class.forName(aClassName);
System.out.println("Class is " + aClass);
System.out.println("Class package is " + aClass.getPackage());
System.out.println("Classloader is " + aClass.getClassLoader());
System.out.println("Superclass is " + aClass.getSuperclass());
System.out.println("Superclass package is " +
aClass.getSuperclass().getPackage());
Object o = aClass.newInstance();
System.out.println("New object is " + o);
System.out.println("New object is a Logon object: " +
(o instanceof com.inmezzo.authn.logon.Logon));
System.out.flush();
m_authenticator = (com.inmezzo.authn.logon.Logon) o; // Boom!
}
catch(Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
When this code attempts to load a custom authenticator running under Tomcat,
I get the following output:
Class is class rdc.users.RIOLogon
Class package is package rdc.users
Classloader is StandardClassLoader
...
Superclass is class com.inmezzo.authn.logon.Logon
Superclass package is package com.inmezzo.authn.logon
New object is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New object is a Logon object: false
java.lang.ClassCastException at...
When, however, I execute the same code from the command line, I get the
output that I would expect:
Class is class rdc.users.RIOLogon
Class package is package rdc.users
Classloader is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Superclass is class com.inmezzo.authn.logon.Logon
Superclass package is package com.inmezzo.authn.logon
New object is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New object is a Logon object: true
Can anybody tell me what the problem is here? I don't think that I'm trying
to do anything too perverse. Is there perhaps a configuration setting for
Tomcat that will fix this? Alternatively, can anybody confirm whether it is
worth my while to rewrite the abstract base class as an interface? I'm
loath to do this only to find that it doesn't fix the problem.
Thanks in advance for any light that you can shed on this matter,
Chris Williams.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
