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/**
 * The <code>Authenticator</code> interface defines the service interface of the
 * authenticator used by the Sling engine. This service provides a method to
 * find an {@link AuthenticationHandler} and call its
 * {@link AuthenticationHandler#requestAuthentication(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse)}
 * method.
 * <p>
 * This interface is not intended to be implemented by applications but may be
 * used to initiate the authentication process form a request processing servlet
 * or script.
 * 
 * @since 2.0.4
 */
public interface Authenticator {

    /**
     * Finds an {@link AuthenticationHandler} for the given request and call its
     * {@link AuthenticationHandler#requestAuthentication(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse)}
     * method to initiate an authentication process with the client.
     * <p>
     * This method must be called on an uncommitted response since the
     * implementation may want to reset the response to start the authentication
     * process with a clean response. If the response is already committed an
     * <code>IllegalStateException</code> is thrown.
     * <p>
     * After this method has finished, request processing should be terminated
     * and the response be considered committed and finished.
     * 
     * @param request The object representing the client request.
     * @param response The object representing the response to the client.
     * @throws IllegalStateException If the response has already been committed.
     */
    public void requestAuthentication(HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpServletResponse response);

}