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Group.java API Doc Java SE 5 API 2178 Fri Aug 26 14:57:16 BST 2005 java.security.acl

Group

public interface Group implements Principal

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.

author: Satish Dharmaraj

Fields Summary
Constructors Summary
Methods Summary
public boolean addMember(java.security.Principal user)
Adds the specified member to the group.
param
user the principal to add to this group.
return
true if the member was successfully added, false if the principal was already a member.
public boolean isMember(java.security.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.
param
member the principal whose membership is to be checked.
return
true if the principal is a member of this group, false otherwise.
public java.util.Enumeration 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).
return
an enumeration of the group members.
public boolean removeMember(java.security.Principal user)
Removes the specified member from the group.
param
user the principal to remove from this group.
return
true if the principal was removed, or false if the principal was not a member.