001    /*
002     * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
003     * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
004     * distributed with this work for additional information
005     * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
006     * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
007     * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
008     * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
009     *
010     *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
011     *
012     * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
013     * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
014     * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
015     * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
016     * specific language governing permissions and limitations
017     * under the License.
018     */
019    package org.apache.shiro.authz.permission;
020    
021    import org.apache.shiro.authz.Permission;
022    
023    /**
024     * A {@code PermisisonResolver} resolves a String value and converts it into a
025     * {@link org.apache.shiro.authz.Permission Permission} instance.
026     * <p/>
027     * The default {@link WildcardPermissionResolver} should be
028     * suitable for most purposes, which constructs {@link WildcardPermission} objects.
029     * However, any resolver may be configured if an application wishes to use different
030     * {@link org.apache.shiro.authz.Permission} implementations.
031     * <p/>
032     * A {@code PermissionResolver} is used by many Shiro components such as annotations, property file
033     * configuration, URL configuration, etc.  It is useful whenever a String representation of a permission is specified
034     * and that String needs to be converted to a Permission instance before executing a security check.
035     * <p/>
036     * Shiro chooses to support {@link WildcardPermission Wildcardpermission}s by default in almost all components and
037     * we do that in the form of the {@link WildcardPermissionResolver WildcardPermissionResolver}.   One of the nice
038     * things about {@code WildcardPermission}s being supported by default is that it makes it very easy to
039     * store complex permissions in the database - and also makes it very easy to represent permissions in JSP files,
040     * annotations, etc., where a simple string representation is useful.
041     * <p/>
042     * Although this happens to be the Shiro default, you are of course free to provide custom
043     * String-to-Permission conversion by providing Shiro components any instance of this interface.
044     *
045     * @author Jeremy Haile
046     * @author Les Hazlewood
047     * @see org.apache.shiro.authz.ModularRealmAuthorizer#setPermissionResolver(PermissionResolver) ModularRealmAuthorizer.setPermissionResolver
048     * @see org.apache.shiro.realm.AuthorizingRealm#setPermissionResolver(PermissionResolver) AuthorizingRealm.setPermissionResolver
049     * @see PermissionResolverAware PermissionResolverAware
050     * @since 0.9
051     */
052    public interface PermissionResolver {
053    
054        /**
055         * Resolves a Permission based on the given String representation.
056         *
057         * @param permissionString the String representation of a permission.
058         * @return A Permission object that can be used internally to determine a subject's permissions.
059         * @throws InvalidPermissionStringException
060         *          if the permission string is not valid for this resolver.
061         */
062        Permission resolvePermission(String permissionString);
063    
064    }