Group (Java Platform SE 6)

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Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

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java.security.acl
Interface Group

All Superinterfaces:: Principal

public interface Group
extends Principal
extends 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.

Method Summary
`boolean`	`addMember(Principal user)` Adds the specified member to the group.
`boolean`	`isMember(Principal member)` Returns true if the passed principal is a member of the group.
`Enumeration<? extends Principal>`	`members()` Returns an enumeration of the members in the group.
`boolean`	`removeMember(Principal user)` Removes the specified member from the group.

Methods inherited from interface java.security.Principal
`equals, getName, hashCode, toString`

Method Detail

addMember

boolean addMember(Principal user)

Adds the specified member to the group.

Parameters:: user - the principal to add to this group.
Returns:: true if the member was successfully added, false if the principal was already a member.

removeMember

boolean removeMember(Principal user)

Removes the specified member from the group.

Parameters:: user - the principal to remove from this group.
Returns:: true if the principal was removed, or false if the principal was not a member.

isMember

boolean isMember(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.

Parameters:: member - the principal whose membership is to be checked.
Returns:: true if the principal is a member of this group, false otherwise.

members

Enumeration<? extends Principal> 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).

Returns:: an enumeration of the group members.