001/**
002 * Copyright 2005-2015 The Kuali Foundation
003 *
004 * Licensed under the Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
005 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
006 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
007 *
008 * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php
009 *
010 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
011 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
012 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
013 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
014 * limitations under the License.
015 */
016package org.kuali.rice.ksb.security;
017
018import java.security.Signature;
019
020/**
021 * Responsible for signing a message.  A reference is provided to the Signature to allow for population
022 * of the singnature from message data.  When this population of data is complete, the sign() method
023 * will sign the message according to the implementation.
024 * <br>
025 * Note that the interface itself does not provide any means of retrieving the message being signed.  It
026 * is up to the implementing classes to determine what consititutes "signing" of a message.
027 * 
028 * @author Kuali Rice Team (rice.collab@kuali.org)
029 */
030public interface DigitalSigner {
031
032        /**
033         * Retrieve a reference to Signature which will be used for signing.
034         */
035        public Signature getSignature();
036
037        /**
038         * Sign the message using the Signature.  This method will not be called until all of the message data
039         * has been populated into the Signature.  After signing implementations may, for example, place the digital 
040         * signature in a header or perform whatever steps are required to successfully sign the message.
041         */
042        public void sign() throws Exception;
043        
044}