The Shibboleth IdP V4 software will leave support on September 1, 2024.

StorageServiceConnector

 

This feature requires V4.1 and later.

Namespace: urn:mace:shibboleth:2.0:resolver
Schema: http://shibboleth.net/schema/idp/shibboleth-attribute-resolver.xsd

Overview

The StorageService DataConnector generates results from a query against the IdP's StorageService API (see also StorageConfiguration). It's main value is in prototyping certain features that require persistent storage without the need for new code, and because the IdP includes an in-memory service by default, it's easy to use for testing with no extra configuration.

The interface to storage relies on lookup of a single record at a time, but the data connector also allows scriptable response handling that can parse the content of a storage record into multiple results, if the record is in a parseable form such as JSON.

General Configuration

The connector marries three essential pieces of configuration to be supplied by the deployer:

  • a StorageService bean

  • the two-part record lookup criteria (known as "context" and "key" in the storage model)

  • response processing

The lookup criteria are produced by evaluation of a pair of Velocity templates supplied with the <ContextTemplate> and <KeyTemplate> elements.

The two supplied response processing implementations consist of:

  • A simple mechanism that exposes the entire record content as a single attribute (configured with the generatedAttributeID setting to name the attribute).

  • A more complex approach using the <RecordMapping> element to supply a script to produce attribute data from the record arbitrarily.

At minimum, a storageServiceRef attribute must be supplied to provide the StorageService to use.

Context/Key Template Contexts

Several variables are available in the two template contexts. In practice, $resolutionContext.principal and various named dependent attributes (if any) tend to be most useful.

Name

Type

Description

Name

Type

Description

resolutionContext

AttributeResolutionContext

Commonly useful members include $resolutionContext.principal and $resolutionContext.attributeRecipientID

custom

Object

Optional object injected via customObjectRef attribute

foo, bar, etc.

List<IdPAttributeValue>

For each IdPAttribute available from all the provided dependencies, the attributes' values are available as a collection under the attribute's name.

Examples

Any examples here omit the Spring beans that define the StorageService to use. This service may be one used for other purposes within the IdP, or may be defined specifically for this purpose.

<DataConnector id="storageConnector" xsi:type="StorageService" storageServiceRef="shibboleth.StorageService" generatedAttributeID="storageRecord"> <ContextTemplate>org.example</ContextTemplate> <KeyTemplate>$resolutionContext.principal</KeyTemplate> <ResultCache expireAfterWrite="PT5M"/> </DataConnector>

Reference

The only required attribute is storageServiceRef.

Name

Type

Default

Description

Name

Type

Default

Description

storageServiceRef

Bean ID

 

Bean ID of the StorageService instance to use

generatedAttributeID

String

 

Name of attribute to populate with the entire storage record value. Mutually exclusive with the <RecordMapping> element.

noResultIsError

Boolean

false

When true, failure to find a matching record produces a resolution exception instead of no result

customObjectRef

Bean ID

 

Injected into context and key template generation as $custom variable

mappingStrategyRef

Bean ID

 

Bean ID of a StorageMappingStrategy to process the result set in a pluggable way

executableSearchBuilderRef

Bean ID

 

Bean ID of an ExecutableSearchBuilder<StorageServiceSearch> to produce the request to execute

templateEngine

Bean ID

 

Bean ID of a org.apache.velocity.app.VelocityEngine to use for processing the URL template, generally unnecessary

Name

Cardinality

Description

Name

Cardinality

Description

<ContextTemplate>

0 or 1

Velocity template producing the storage context to query

<KeyTemplate>

0 or 1

Velocity template producing the storage key to query

<RecordMapping>

0 or 1

Inline or external script to execute to process the response body

<ResultCache>

 

0 or 1

Defines how results should be cached.

<ResultCacheBean>

Bean ID (in the element content) defining how results should be cached as an externally defined com.google.common.cache.Cache<String,Map<String,IdPAttribute>> 

Spring Configuration

If the springResource or springResourceRef attributes are specified, then the configuration of the DataConnector bean is partially delegated to the supplied resources. The system will create a factory for a StorageServiceDataConnector object, and look for beans in the Spring resource(s) supplied that match the types of properties supported by that type and its parent classes.

The connector may be supplied with beans of the following types:

In addition native bean IDs can be injected as follows:

  1. The StorageService instance is injected via the storageServiceRef attribute.

  2. The builder for the query can be specified as an externally defined bean via the executableSearchBuilderRef attribute (as a replacement for the <ContextTemplate> element and related elements). This allows for complete generality of the query-building process.

  3. The processing of the response can be specified with an externally defined bean via the mappingStrategyRef attribute (as a replacement for the <RecordMapping> element).

  4. The caching of results can be specified as an externally defined bean via the <ResultCacheBean> element (as a replacement for the <ResultCache> element).

  5. Rarely, a non-default Velocity engine can be injected via the templateEngine attribute.