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.

flowExecutionUrl

The URL to redirect to in order to advance the flow (you’ll see this in form actions, typically)

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."))