public interface

Group

implements Principal
java.security.acl.Group
Known Indirect Subclasses

Class Overview

This interface is used to represent a group of principals. (A principal represents an entity such as an individual user or a company).

Note that Group extends Principal. Thus, either a Principal or a Group can be passed as an argument to methods containing a Principal parameter. For example, you can add either a Principal or a Group to a Group object by calling the object's addMember method, passing it the Principal or Group.

Summary

Public Methods
abstract boolean addMember(Principal user)
Adds the specified member to the group.
abstract boolean isMember(Principal member)
Returns true if the passed principal is a member of the group.
abstract Enumeration<? extends Principal> members()
Returns an enumeration of the members in the group.
abstract boolean removeMember(Principal user)
Removes the specified member from the group.
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Inherited Methods
From interface java.security.Principal

Public Methods

public abstract boolean addMember (Principal user)

Adds the specified member to the group.

Parameters
user the principal to add to this group.
Returns
  • true if the member was successfully added, false if the principal was already a member.

public abstract boolean isMember (Principal member)

Returns true if the passed principal is a member of the group. This method does a recursive search, so if a principal belongs to a group which is a member of this group, true is returned.

Parameters
member the principal whose membership is to be checked.
Returns
  • true if the principal is a member of this group, false otherwise.

public abstract Enumeration<? extends Principal> members ()

Returns an enumeration of the members in the group. The returned objects can be instances of either Principal or Group (which is a subclass of Principal).

Returns
  • an enumeration of the group members.

public abstract boolean removeMember (Principal user)

Removes the specified member from the group.

Parameters
user the principal to remove from this group.
Returns
  • true if the principal was removed, or false if the principal was not a member.