com.caplin.keymaster.servlet
Interface ResponseFormatter

All Known Subinterfaces:

AdvancedResponseFormatter

All Known Implementing Classes:

HTMLFormatter, JavaScriptFormatter, NewsFormatter, StreamLinkFormatter

public interface ResponseFormatter

This interface is designed to be used by developers who wish to customise the type of response being returned by a request for a token. An instance of this class can then be created by the KeyMaster servlet, StandardKeyMaster using reflection. Therefore it is possible to have many different types of ResponseFormatter that can all be used dymanically.

In order for StandardKeyMaster to successfully load a custom ResponseFormatter the class implementing this interface should define ONLY a default constructor. The developer must also add an additional entry in the servlets configuration file (web.xml). This process is explained further in the JavaDoc overview and administration guide.

Author:

David Shorten

Method Summary

String	formatErrorResponse(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest request, String errorMessage) This method can be called from the servlet if there was an error while trying to process the request or generate a token.
String	formatResponse(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest request, String token) Deprecated. Use AdvancedResponseFormatter.formatResponse(HttpServletRequest, String, UserCredentialsProvider) instead.

Method Detail

formatResponse

String formatResponse(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest request,
                      String token)

Deprecated. Use AdvancedResponseFormatter.formatResponse(HttpServletRequest, String, UserCredentialsProvider) instead.

This is the main method for the interface. It is used to encode the token and return the processed response in the appropriate format. This method should try to return a token but if an error occurs then the formatErrorResponse method should be called to correctly encode the error before returning to the calling servlet.

Parameters:

request - This parameter should be used to retrieve any required information from the query string that was used to call the servlet. Any missing query strings should result in an error being returned (using the formatErrorResponse method).

token - The token that has been created for the request. Each token will be unique. The token should only be returned if there were no errors during processing the response.

Returns:

returns the response in the appropriate format or else may return a formatted error if there was a problem while trying to format the response.

formatErrorResponse

String formatErrorResponse(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest request,
                           String errorMessage)

This method can be called from the servlet if there was an error while trying to process the request or generate a token. This method can also be called from the formatResponse method if there is an error when trying to format an appropriate response.

Parameters:

request - This parameter should be used to retrieve any required information that may be needed to format an error response. This parameter is always passed in from the calling servlet.

errorMessage - This parameter is an explanation of what has gone wrong. It should still be formatted into an appropriate response.

Returns:

The error message should now be in an appropriate format to be returned to the calling client.