Page Comparison

encoder

An HTMLEncoder, allows safe HTML encoding of various types. This is further described under HtmlEncoder.

profileRequestContext

A ProfileRequestContext, primarily used to locate subsidiary contexts:
#set ($rpContext = $profileRequestContext.getSubcontext('net.shibboleth.idp.profile.context.RelyingPartyContext'))
This is an advanced topic and out of scope for this page.

environment

The Spring Environment (javadoc here). This will be most frequently used to resolve properties (defined in idp.properties or other files), by calling the getProperty method. For instance
environment.getProperty("idp.whatever","default")

custom

The Spring bean named shibboleth.CustomViewContext. This can be whatever you define it to be (in global.xml). That bean and its content should be treated as immutable.

request

The HttpServletRequest (javadoc here). This is an advanced topic and out of scope for this page.

response

The HttpServletResponse (javadoc here). This is an advanced topic and out of scope for this page.

flowRequestContext

The Spring Web Flow RequestContext (javadoc here). This is an advanced topic and out of scope for this page.

springMacroRequestContext

A help context supplied by Spring. Primarily used to render language specific resources from the message bundles. For instance
$springMacroRequestContext.getMessage("idp.message", "An unidentified error occurred."))

rpUIContext

A RelyingPartyUIContext object. This object allows language sensitive rendering of specific information about the relying party (logos and so forth). This is described further here.

attributeDisplayNameFunction

A Function takes an IdPAttribute (usually from $attributeReleaseContext.getConsentableAttributes().values()) and outputs the DisplayName appropriate to the browser locales.

attributeDisplayDescriptionFunction

A Function that takes an IdPAttribute (usually from $attributeReleaseContext.getConsentableAttributes().values()) and outputs the DisplayDescription appropriate to the browser locales.

consentContext

A ConsentContext representing the state of a consent flow (current and previous consents). Further information TBD.

attributeReleaseContext

An AttributeReleaseContext, this can be used to provide an iterable group of those attributes to which consent can be applied via the call $attributeReleaseContext.getConsentableAttributes().values().
Specific attributes can be found by direct lookup ($attributeReleaseContext.getConsentableAttributes().get($attributeId)).
In Java terms, $attributeReleaseContext.getConsentableAttributes() is a Map.