This interface encapsulates a single GSS-API principal entity. The
application obtains an implementation of this interface
through one of the
createName
methods that exist in the
GSSManager
class. Conceptually a GSSName contains many
representations of the entity or many primitive name elements, one for
each supported underlying mechanism. In GSS terminology, a GSSName that
contains an element from just one mechanism is called a Mechanism Name
(MN)
Since different authentication mechanisms may employ different
namespaces for identifying their principals, GSS-API's naming support is
necessarily complex in multi-mechanism environments (or even in some
single-mechanism environments where the underlying mechanism supports
multiple namespaces). Different name formats and their definitions are
identified with Oid's
and some standard types
are defind in this interface. The format of the names can be derived
based on the unique Oid
of its name type.
Included below are code examples utilizing the GSSName
interface.
The code below creates a GSSName
, converts it to an MN, performs a
comparison, obtains a printable representation of the name, exports it
to a byte array and then re-imports to obtain a
new GSSName
.
GSSManager manager = GSSManager.getInstance();
// create a host based service name
GSSName name = manager.createName("service@host",
GSSName.NT_HOSTBASED_SERVICE);
Oid krb5 = new Oid("1.2.840.113554.1.2.2");
GSSName mechName = name.canonicalize(krb5);
// the above two steps are equivalent to the following
GSSName mechName = manager.createName("service@host",
GSSName.NT_HOSTBASED_SERVICE, krb5);
// perform name comparison
if (name.equals(mechName))
print("Names are equals.");
// obtain textual representation of name and its printable
// name type
print(mechName.toString() +
mechName.getStringNameType().toString());
// export and re-import the name
byte [] exportName = mechName.export();
// create a new name object from the exported buffer
GSSName newName = manager.createName(exportName,
GSSName.NT_EXPORT_NAME);