jAuthentic / Blog: Recent posts

Well, when we are writing an application, a simple authentication is to show up a login dialog where the user can enter their user id and password and get that validated against some data stored in a database. A simple "user id - password - DB validation" is a method of authentication.

We can change the DB-based validation with, say, LDAP-based validation. Otherwise, instead of a password, we might throw one or two challenge questions from a set of challenge questions that we have and get the answers validated using the same method as a password would get validated. The point here is that the method of getting user input and the method of validation must be loosely coupled. A method of authentication is a combination of one particular method of getting user input and one compatible method of validating the input. A framework for authentication should allow us to configure the method of authentication, or even better, support multiple methods of authentication.... read more

Authentication is a very common functionality that is required in almost all applications. The steps involved in authentication includes - getting User Input and validating it. From the application developer's point of view these steps are external to the core logic that the application intends to do.
In many applications, it is common practice to call a specific method that would show up certain form in which the user might enter details which will be validated.This has the following disadvantages - ... read more