API Enhancement: Add ResourceResolverFactory

Status: IMPLEMENTED
Created: 9. November 2008
Author: fmeschbe
JIRA: SLING-1262 and SLING-2396
Prototype: http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/sling/whiteboard/fmeschbe/resource
Updated: 17. November 2008, fmeschbe, Added Section 5.2
Updated: 05. July 2012, cziegele, Implemented with some additions as outlined in SLING-2396

1 Current State

The Sling API currently only defines the ResourceResolver interface but not how such a resolver is to be created/retrieved.

In addition the Sling implementation has:

  • [Sling] Repository providers, which just register one or more repository instances as services
  • JcrResourceResolverFactory service which creates ResourceResolver instances based on JCR Session objects
  • The authenticator selects one of the Repository services to authenticate against and creates the Session to get the ResourceResolver from the JcrResourceResolverFactory

This implementation has a series of drawbacks:

  • The authenticator decides which repository to access: Problem is, that the authenticator is most probably not the right instance to decide on this issue.
  • Getting a Resource resolver is tedious in that a Session is first to be created and then a resolver can be retrieved from the factory
  • Only a single workspace of a single repository may be accessed at a any time and the authenticator actually defines which of those.
  • All in all, this decouples the ResourceResolverProvider too much from the repository and gives the authenticator too much "power"

Therefore I propose the extension of the Sling API as presented herein.

2 Extensions at a Glance

This is the list of additions, I propose for the Sling API. Please refer to then following sections for more details, description and motivation.

  • Add ResourceResolverFactory service interface which provides a ResourceResolver instances
  • Add ResourceProviderFactory service interface to help ResourceResolverFactory in creating ResourceResolver instances
  • Add lifecyle support to the ResourceResolver and ResourceProvider interfaces
  • Add LoginException to support failure reporting in the ResourceResolverFactory

3 ResourceResolverFactory

The ResourceResolverFactory is provided by the Sling framework as a service. The factory provides a single method

ResourceResolver getResourceResolver(Map<String, Object> credentials) throws LoginException;

This method uses the credentials object to authenticate the user and to create ResourceResolver instances, which may then be used to access resources. If authentication fails, a LoginException (see below) is thrown.

Authentication fails if at least one ResourceProviderFactory service which is registered with the provider.required property set to true throws a LoginExcdeption. This for example allows multiple ResourceProviderFactory services to be registered to access the JCR repository, each for a different location/workspace and one factory service to be the one to decide, whether authentication succeeds or not. ResourceResovlerFactory services not having the provider.required property set to true will just be ignored if they cannot return a ResourceProvider.

4 ResourceResolver

The ResourceResolver interface is extended with a new method

void close();

which must be called when the resource resolver is no longer used. This allows for any cleanup required in the ResourceProvider instances attached to the resource resolver.

5 ResourceProviderFactory

The ResourceResolverFactory will return a ResourceResolver which behind the scenes makes use of ResourceProvider instances. This interface already exists today and is implemented to access bundle or filesystem resources. Actually repository access is internally also implemented as a ResourceProvider.

To allow for authenticated ResourceProvider instances in addition to unauthenticated ones, a new factory interface ResourceProviderFactory is introduced which provides a single method:

// Creates a normal resource provider using credentials
// to indicate the user to login as.
ResourceProvider getResourceProvider(Map<String, Object> credentials) throws LoginException;

// Creates an administrative resource provider. Any user
// credentials are ignored. The ResourceProvider is assumed
// to have administrative (aka root aka superuser) rights
// on the resources provided.
// This method is targeted as background services and not
// intended for normal request processing.
ResourceProvider getAdministrativeResourceProvider(Map<String, Object> credentials) throws LoginException;

// Creates an anonymous resource provider. Any user
// credentials are ignored. The ResourceProvider is assumed
// to have restricted (read-only mostly) rights on the
// resources provided. This factory method may be used to
// implemented guest access to the system.
// This method is targeted as background services. It may
// also be used by authenticators to support anonymous access
// to the system in a public site where authentication is
// the exception rather than the rule.
ResourceProvider getAnonymousResourceProvider(Map<String, Object> credentials) throws LoginException;

This method returns a resource provider with the given credentials or throws a LoginException if the credentials do not allow access to the resources provided by the ResourceProviderFactory.

The ResourceProviderFactory is a service interface and as such the registered ResourceProviderFactory services have the following defined service registration properties:

  • provider.roots – Defines the root paths under which the ResourceProvider is attached into Resource tree. This is the same property as for the ResourceProvider service and applies to all ResourceProvider instances created by the factory.
  • provider.required – Indicates whether the ResourceProvider instances provided by the ResourceProviderFactory have to be assumed as required. Failing to create as ResourceProvider with this factory, will cause the ResourceResolverFactory.getResourceResolver() method to fail if this property is set to the boolean value true.

5.1 Credentials

Since I cannot assume all real-world use cases right now and do not want to tie the Sling API into any specific use case, I propse the credentials to simply be a Map<String, Object> object. To simplify use, though, a few predfined entries are defined in the ResourceResolverFactory interface:

  • user.name (String) – The name of the user to connect as to resource providers.
  • user.password (String) – The password supplied by the user to connect to resource providers.
  • user.workspace (String) – This convenience property may be used to hint at a primary workspace to connect to.
  • user.session (javax.jcr.Session) – This property is primarily present to implement backwards compatibility for the JcrResourceResolverFactory interface. If this property is provided, ResourceProviderFactory services may wish to ignore any other properties and just use the JCR Session.

Other properties may of course be supplied and depend mainly on ResourceProviderFactory services, which may require or use them. Generally, though, providing the user.name and user.password properties should suffice it.

5.2 SlingRepository and AbstractSlingRepository

The SlingRepository interface and the AbstractSlingRepository abstract class currently provide support for getting administrative and anonymous sessions to the repository. Access details for such sessions is to be configured with the AbstractSlingRepository implementation.

With the implementation of a ResourceResolverFactory and its accessor methods for acquiring administrative and anonymous access, the respective SlingRepository and AbstractSlingRepository methods become superfluous.

In addition the SlingRepository.getDefaultWorkspace() method is probably also not required since, it is either the underlying actual JCR repository defining the default workspace or any JCR based ResourceProvider which defines which workspace to access.

As a consequence the SlingRepository interface and support for administrative and anonymous access to a repository in the AbstractSlingRepository may be phased out.

However, for some time, we might have to provide backwards compatibility:

  • SlingRepository.getDefaultWorkspace() – Implemented by AbstractSlingRepository; always returns null
  • SlingRepository.loginAdministrative() – Implemented by AbstractSlingRepository; calls ResourceResolverFactory.getAdministrativeResourceResolver() and returns a Session which on logout also closes the ResourceResolver
  • AbstractSlingRepository.login(null, workspace) – Implemented by AbstractSlingRepository; calls ResourceResolverFactory.getAnonymousResourceResolver() and returns a Session which on logout also closes the ResourceResolver
  • The jcr/jackrabbit-server and jcr/jackrabbit-client modules do not register SlingRepository instances anymore but the actual Repository instance as a Repository Service.
  • The SlingRepository service is registered by a backwards compatibility class, probably related to the actual ResourceResolverFactory.

Alternatively, it might also be decided to drop SlingRepository altogether form Sling.

6 ResourceProvider

To allow for ResourceProvider instances returned by ResourceProviderFactory services to be cleaned up when no longer used, a new method is added to the ResourceProvider interface:

void close():

This method must close the ResourceProvider and cleanup any resources used. For example a JCR based ResourceProvider will logout the underlying session upon close.

This method will have no effect if called on a ResourceProvider which is registered as a service. For example the BundleResourceProvider will implement an empty close() method.

The close() method is not expected to throw any exception at all. If some error occurrs while processing cleanup, the method is expected to implement error processing, which might be logging a message or just to ignore the situation.

7 LoginException

The LoginException extends the existing SlingException and therefore is an unchecked RuntimeException. This exception may be thrown by the ResourceProviderFactory.getResourceProvider() and ResourceResolverFactory.getResourceResolver() methods to indicate failure to connect to any resources. The exception should provide a descriptive message as well as any cause which led to the LoginException.

8 Logging into the System

To log into the system, the authenticator will extract the credentials from the HTTP request and call the ResourceResolverFactory.getResourceResolver method with the credentials. If the ResourceResolverFactory throws a LoginException, authentication fails.

9 Changes in Sling

  • The existing JcrResourceResolverFactory interface is deprecated
  • The JcrResourceResolverFactoryImpl class is turned in to a ResourceProviderFactory, which accepts JCR Session instances in the credentials as the base for creating a ResourceProvider instance.
  • A new implementation of the JcrResourceResolverFactory interface is created, which just relates to the ResourceResolverFactory.getResourceResolver() method providing the JCR Session as the only credentials entry.
  • The jcr/resource module is split into two modules:
    • The JcrResourceResolverFactoryImpl and JcrResourceResolver classes are moved to a new module implementing the ResourceResolverFactory interface
    • The jcr/resource module keeps the exported classes and interfaces in the o.a.s.jcr.resource package as well as the internal implementations of the JCR support for the Sling Resource API

Existing code may still use the JcrResourceResolverFactory service to get a ResourceResolver. Still it is expected and proposed for this existing code to migrate to the new API over time. Existing code in the Sling project will be migrated to the new API as soon as it is available. New code should use the new ResourceResolverFactory interface.

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