/*

  * Copyright 2005-2007 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.ksb.security;

 import java.security.Signature;

 /**

  * Responsible for signing a message.  A reference is provided to the Signature to allow for population

  * of the singnature from message data.  When this population of data is complete, the sign() method

  * will sign the message according to the implementation.

  * <br>

  * Note that the interface itself does not provide any means of retrieving the message being signed.  It

  * is up to the implementing classes to determine what consititutes "signing" of a message.

  * 

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

  */

 public interface DigitalSigner {

         /**

          * Retrieve a reference to Signature which will be used for signing.

          */

         public Signature getSignature();

         /**

          * Sign the message using the Signature.  This method will not be called until all of the message data

          * has been populated into the Signature.  After signing implementations may, for example, place the digital 

          * signature in a header or perform whatever steps are required to successfully sign the message.

          */

         public void sign() throws Exception;

 }