96 lines
5.2 KiB
HTML
96 lines
5.2 KiB
HTML
<!--
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* ========================================================================
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*
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* Copyright 2005 Acegi Technology Pty Limited
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*
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* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
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* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
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* You may obtain a copy of the License at
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*
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* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
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*
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* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
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* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
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* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
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* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
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* limitations under the License.
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*
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* ========================================================================
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-->
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
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<head>
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<title>Acegi Security Use Without Spring</title>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>Acegi Security Use Without Spring</h1>
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<h2>Introduction</h2>
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<p>Sometimes we get asked can Acegi Security be used without Spring.
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This page provides a detailed answer.</p>
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<h2>History</h2>
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<p>Acegi Security started out as a method interceptor for Spring IoC container
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managed beans. Typically such beans provide services layer functions.
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Over time Acegi Security grew to offer authentication services, <code>ThreadLocal</code> management,
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web request filtering, extra AOP support,
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ACL features, additional authentication mechanisms and so on (for those interested,
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see our <a href="changes-report.html">change log</a>).</p>
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<h2>Why Use Spring</h2>
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<p>There's plenty written about why the
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<a href="http://www.springframework.org">Spring Framework</a>
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is a good fit for modern applications. If you're not familiar with the benefits
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Spring offers, please take a few minutes to learn more about it. In numerous
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situations Spring will save you many months (or even years) of development time.
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Not to mention your solutions will be better architected
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(designed), better coded (implemented), and better supported (maintained) in the future.
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</p>
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<h2>Acegi Security Dependencies on Spring</h2>
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<p>Acegi Security relies on the Spring IoC container to wire its classes, and execute lifecycle
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methods such as <code>afterPropertiesSet()</code>. Some Acegi Security classes also
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publish events to the <code>ApplicationContext</code>, although you could provide a mock
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implementation of <code>ApplicationContext</code> easily enough which no-ops the method.
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In other words, if you particularly didn't want Spring in your application, you <i>could</i>
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avoid its use by writing equivalent getter, setter and lifecycle invocation processes
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in standard Java code. This is a natural consequence of the Spring way of development,
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which emphasises framework independence (it is <i>not</i> because we think there are good
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reasons people would <i>not</i> use Spring).</p>
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<p>If it sounds too hard (it's not) or counter-productive (it is) to replace Spring's IoC
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services, don't forget you can always deploy Acegi Security and the Spring
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IoC container solely for configuring Acegi Security. Spring does not mandate its
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use in every part of your application. It will work quite successfully doing nothing more than
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acting as a configuration mechanism for Acegi Security. Whilst some may regard this as excessive,
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it's really no different than the traditional approach of every framework having its very
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own XML or other proprietary configuration system. The main difference is that Spring is an
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actual de facto standard, and you can gradually introduce it to other parts of your application
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over time (if desired).</p>
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<p>Acegi Security does <i>not</i> use any other Spring capabilities. Most notably, the
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entire architecture is based around <code>Filter</code>s, not Spring's MVC framework.
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This allows it to be used with any MVC framework, or even with just straight JSPs.
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Acegi Security uses the AOP Alliance and AspectJ interfaces for method interception -
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it does not use any Spring-specific interfaces. As a consequence, Acegi Security is very
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portable to applications that do not leverage <i>any</i> of Spring's capabilities. We should note
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there are several very simple data access objects (DAOs) that use Spring's JDBC abstraction
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layer, although each of these are defined by a simple interface and it is very common in
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even native Spring-powered applications for these to be re-implemented using the application's
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persistence framework of choice (eg Hibernate).
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<h1>Conclusion</h1>
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<p>In summary, we recommend you take a look at Spring and consider using it in your
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applications. Irrespective of whether you do so or not, we strongly recommend you use it
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for configuration and lifecycle management of Acegi Security. If that is also not desired,
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Acegi Security can easily be executed without Spring at all, providing you implement
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similar IoC services. Acegi Security has very minimal dependencies directly on Spring,
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with it being useful in many non-Spring applications and with non-Spring frameworks.
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</body>
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</html>
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