Authenticators and login modules

An authenticator collects client credentials. A login module validates them.

An authenticator is a server component used to collect credentials from the client. The authenticator passes the credentials to a login module, which validates them and builds a client identity object. Both authenticators and login modules are components of the application's realm.

An authenticator can, for example, collect any type of information accessible from an HTTP request object, such as cookies or any data in headers or the body of the request.

A login module can validate the credentials that are passed to it in various ways. For example:

• Use a web service

• Looking up the client ID in a database

• Use an LTPA token

A number of predefined authenticators and login modules are supplied. If these do not meet the needs, we can write our own in Java.

Parent topic: MobileFirst security framework