AW: Dynamic page assembly - role based. Help!

Hello,
  I am currently using StrutsCX in a Role based environment.  I have
leveraged the three main methods of role based development.
1: The web.xml is set to control role-permissions
2: The policy file locks all files accept where explicitly allowed
3:  Use class code to getRemoteUser and getPrinciple

While these are all great to use, none of them work until you know what the
Role/User/Principle are.
So:  Use a ServletFilter to catch all transactions and get & verify the user
authenticity.  This way you can write your authcode once and then set the
filter chain in the web.xml to filter all requests for the application :)

If you are in a non-single signon environment, then you can have the user
login and authenticate then pass the objectId of the
authenticaiton|principle as a JDOM element to be transformed into a hidden
form element.
(note encrypt the ID with some sequencer each time so people can not acquire
the objectId in a simple pass, even though the objectId will only be good
for the session)

Your navigation menu problem can be handled in several ways:
 Quick and easy:  Create and transform it seperately from the the StrutsCX
two stage xml tranformation(Fowler:PEAA), then use a Servlet2.0 Filter to
add it to the response just before sending it to the requester.
(hint: use a $NavigationPlaceHolder variable and replace it with a
string...)

Paul S. Kossler
Sr.Software Engineer
CACI Chesapeake