001    /*
002     * Copyright 2010 the original author or authors.
003     * 
004     *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
005     *  you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
006     *  You may obtain a copy of the License at
007     *
008     *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
009     *
010     *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
011     *  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
012     *  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
013     *  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
014     *  limitations under the License.
015     */
016    package com.hs.mail.security.login;
017    
018    /**
019     * Interface to provide a standard way to translate a plaintext password into a
020     * different representation of that password so that the password may be
021     * compared with the stored encrypted password without having to decode the
022     * encrypted password.
023     * <p>
024     * PasswordEncoder are useful because often the stored passwords are encoded
025     * with a one way hash function which makes them almost impossible to decode.
026     * 
027     * @author Won Chul Doh
028     * @since Jul 18, 2007
029     * 
030     */
031    public interface PasswordEncoder {
032    
033        public String encode(char password[]);
034    
035        public boolean compare(String encoded, char plain[]);
036    
037    }