/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache license, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the license for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the license.
 */
package org.apache.logging.log4j.core.net.ssl;

PasswordProvider implementations are able to produce a password from somewhere. The source of the password data
is implementation-specific.
The getPassword() method may be called multiple times as needed, so the caller does not need to (and should not) keep the password data in memory for longer than absolutely necessary. Users of this class should erase the password array by calling Arrays.fill(char[], char) immediately when authentication is complete and the password data is no longer needed. 
/**
 * PasswordProvider implementations are able to produce a password from somewhere. The source of the password data
 * is implementation-specific.
 * <p>The {@link #getPassword()} method may be called multiple times as needed, so the
 * caller does not need to (and <b>should not</b>) keep the password data in memory for longer than absolutely
 * necessary. Users of this class should erase the password array by calling
 * {@link java.util.Arrays#fill(char[], char)} immediately when authentication is complete and the password data
 * is no longer needed.
 * </p>
 */
public interface PasswordProvider {

    
Returns a new char[] array with the password characters.
 It is the responsibility of the caller to erase this data by calling Arrays.fill(char[], char) immediately when authentication is complete and the password data is no longer needed. 
Returns:
a copy of the password/**
     * Returns a new char[] array with the password characters.
     * <p>
     * It is the responsibility of the caller to erase this data by calling
     * {@link java.util.Arrays#fill(char[], char)} immediately when authentication is complete and the password data
     * is no longer needed.
     * </p>
     * @return a copy of the password
     */
    char[] getPassword();
}