Login is done as a result of a missing attribute (possibly invoked in checkAttributes), when a find{AttributeName} method is called. The missing attribute is the principal that needs to log in. If the attribute cannot be found due to wrong login information, org.makumba.UnauthenticatedException is usually thrown. The principal (the person who logs in) can have more members (e.g. group, Lbg, Company representatives). E.g. the findCompany() method will check to see if the authentication (email_address and password) corresponds to any company representative of that company. If yes, it will return that company. Login can be done in 2 ways: (Http basic authentication login: will set the attributes $username, $password ) cookie login: done in a page called login.jsp, in the same directory or (if missing) in any of the parents. It should contain at least: The login form will pass further (as hidden arguments) all the http parameters it got. Note that <mak:login> is only needed upon automatic login (a page displayed when the user requested another page, that needs authentication). If you wish to ask for login manually in a startup page, a normal HTML form is enough. To cancel out a certain attribute, in order to produce a new login, the logout tag is available You can remove (cancel-out, logout) multiple attributes from the session by using <mak:logout actor="attribute name"> several times and/or by using the star (*) wildcard, e.g.: (Later on, logout request might be done in the business logic, with a method deleteAttributes(param) that can accept either a String (with optional '*') or a String[]. ) (Later: to accomodate servers that don't do session tracking, login can be done by a query condition rather than by doing a query (once per session) to find an attribute. This way, it won't need to do a query (to check the authentication) at every access, but that condition will make sure that authentication is done. ) (<mak:object from="best.Student stud" where ="stud.$login()"> ...</mak:object> then methodBestSudentLogin("stud") will return "stud.auth.email=$username AND stud.auth.password=$password" This can be used for http authentication with no session tracking. ) (Later: if an attribute has multiple values, a choose{AttributeName}.jsp page is shown. For example, a super user (for that area) can choose to act as any student, Lbg, or company... A student member of more local Vivaldi teams can choose to act for any of the viv teams, etc. )
