public final class AuthenticationContext
extends Object
implements Closeable

A glorified map of key value pairs holding (cleartext) authentication data. Authentication contexts are used internally when network operations need to access secured repositories or proxies. Each authentication context manages the credentials required to access a single host. Unlike Authentication callbacks which exist for a potentially long time like the duration of a repository system session, an authentication context has a supposedly short lifetime and should be closed as soon as the corresponding network operation has finished:

 AuthenticationContext context = AuthenticationContext.forRepository( session, repository );
 try {
     // get credentials
     char[] password = context.get( AuthenticationContext.PASSWORD, char[].class );
     // perform network operation using retrieved credentials
     ...
 } finally {
     // erase confidential authentication data from heap memory
     AuthenticationContext.close( context );
 }
 

The same authentication data can often be presented using different data types, e.g. a password can be presented using a character array or (less securely) using a string. For ease of use, an authentication context treats the following groups of data types as equivalent and converts values automatically during retrieval:

• String, char[]
• String, File

An authentication context is thread-safe.