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.realm;
20
21 import java.util.Collection;
22
23 /**
24 * Enables Shiro end-users to configure and initialize one or more {@link Realm Realm} instances
25 * in any manner desired.
26 * <p/>
27 * This interface exists to support environments where end-users may not wish to use Shiro's default
28 * text-based configuration to create and configure realms, and instead wish to retrieve a realm configured in a
29 * proprietary manner. An implementation of this interface can access that proprietary mechanism to retrieve the
30 * already-created <tt>Realm</tt>s.
31 *
32 * <p>The <code>Realm</code> instances returned will used to construct the application's
33 * {@link org.apache.shiro.mgt.SecurityManager SecurityManager} instance.
34 *
35 * @since 0.9
36 */
37 public interface RealmFactory {
38
39 /**
40 * Returns a collection of {@link Realm Realm} instances that will be used to construct
41 * the application's SecurityManager instance.
42 *
43 * <p>The order of the collection is important. The {@link org.apache.shiro.mgt.SecurityManager SecurityManager}
44 * implementation will consult the Realms during authentication (log-in) and authorization (access control)
45 * operations in the collection's <b>iteration order</b>. That is, the resulting collection's
46 * {@link java.util.Iterator Iterator} determines the order in which Realms are used.
47 *
48 * @return the <code>Collection</code> of Realms that the application's <code>SecurityManager</code> will use
49 * for security data access.
50 */
51 Collection<Realm> getRealms();
52
53 }