# Group Providers

The Java broker utilises GroupProviders to allow assigning users to groups for use in ACLs. Following authentication by a given Authentication Provider, the configured Group Providers are consulted allowing the assignment of GroupPrincipals for a given authenticated user. Any number of Group Providers can be added into the Broker. All of them will be checked for the presence of the groups for a given authenticated user.

The Group Provider can be configured using REST Management interfaces and Web Management Console.

The following Group Provider managing operations are available from Web Management Console:

- A new Group Provider can be added by clicking onto "Add Group Provider" button on a Broker tab.

- An existing providers can be removed by pressing "Delete Group Provider" button on Broker tab or Group Provider tab.

- On clicking onto provider name in the Group Providers grid or Broker object tree, the tab for the Group Provider is displayed.

- A new group can be added into the Group Provider by clicking onto "Add Group" button on provider tab.

- An existing group can be deleted from the Group Provider by clicking onto "Delete Group" button on provider tab.

- On clicking onto group name in the groups grid, the tab with the list of existing group members is displayed for the Group.

- From the Group tab a new member can be added into a group or existing members can be deleted from a group by clicking on "Add Group Member" or "Remove Group Members" accordingly.

## GroupFile Provider

The GroupFile Provider allows specifying group membership in a flat file on disk. On adding a new GroupFile Provider the path to the groups file is required to be specified. If file does not exist an empty file is created automatically. On deletion of GroupFile Provider the groups file is deleted as well. Only one instance of "GroupFile" Provider per groups file location can be created. On attempt to create another GroupFile Provider pointing to the same location the error will be displayed and the creation will be aborted.

### File Format

The groups file has the following format:

        # <GroupName>.users = <comma deliminated user list>
        # For example:

        administrators.users = admin,manager

Only users can be added to a group currently, not other groups. Usernames can't contain commas.

Lines starting with a '#' are treated as comments when opening the file, but these are not preserved when the broker updates the file due to changes made through the management interface.