/**

  * Copyright 2005-2011 The Kuali Foundation

  *

  * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (the "License");

  * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.

  * You may obtain a copy of the License at

  *

  * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php

  *

  * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software

  * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,

  * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.

  * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and

  * limitations under the License.

  */

 package org.kuali.rice.kim.api.identity;

 import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;

 /**

  * This service is used to extract the name of the authenticated principal from

  * an incoming http request.  Depending on the implementation of this service,

  * it may extract information from a request which has already been authenticated

  * (i.e. via another service like CAS or Shiboleth).  Alternatively, this

  * implementation might actually perform the authentication itself based on

  * information available on the http request.

  * 

  * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)

  * 

  */

 public interface AuthenticationService {

         /**

          * Returns the principalName of the principal that has authenticated with

          * the incoming HttpServletRequest.  Implementations of this method might

          * perform actual authentication or merely extract the existing

          * authenticated principal's name off of the incoming request.

          * 

          * @param request the incoming HttpServletRequest

          * @return the principalName of the authenticated principal, or null if

          * the principal could not be authenticated

          */

     String getPrincipalName(HttpServletRequest request);

 }