Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

PasswordAuthentication

Synopsis

This simple immutable class encapsulates a username and a password. The password is stored as a character array rather than as a String object so that the caller can erase the contents of the array after use for increased security. Note that the PasswordAuthentication( ) constructor clones the specified password character array, but getPassword( ) returns a reference to the object’s internal array.

Application programmers defining an Authenticator object for their application need to create and return a PasswordAuthentication object from the getPasswordAuthentication( ) method of that object. System programmers writing URLStreamHandler implementations or otherwise interacting with a network server that requests password authentication may obtain a PasswordAutentication object representing the user’s name and password by calling the static Authenticator.requestPasswordAuthentication( ) method.

public final class PasswordAuthentication {
// Public Constructors
     public PasswordAuthentication(String userName, char[ ] password);  
// Public Instance Methods
     public char[ ] getPassword( );  
     public String getUserName( );  
}

Returned By

Authenticator.{getPasswordAuthentication( ), requestPasswordAuthentication( )}