Passay − Quick Guide
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Passay − Overview
Passay is a Java based Password generation and validation library. It provides comprehensive features list in order to validate/generate passwords and is highly configurable.
Passay Components
Passay API has 3 core components.
Rule − one or more rules which define a password policy rule set.
PasswordValidator − A validator component which validates a password against a given rule set.
PasswordGenerator − A generator component which produces passwords to satisfy a given rule set.
Rule overview
Rules are the foundation blocks for both password validation and generation. There are two broad categories of rules−
Positive match require that passwords satisfy a rule.
Negative match reject passwords that satisfy a rule.
Features
Following are some of the features that Passay library provides.
Password Validation Passay library helps in enforcing a password policy by validating passwords against a configurable rule set. It has a rich set of existing rules for common use-cases. For additional cases, it provides a simple Rule interface to implement the custom rule.
Password Generation − It provides a configurable rule set which can be used to generate passwords as well.
Command Line Tools − It provides tools to automate password policy enforcement.
convenient − Easy to use.
Extensible − All Passay components are extensible.
Supports Internalization − Passay components are internationalization ready.
Passay − Environment Setup
Setup Java
If you are still willing to set up your environment for Java programming language, then this section guides you on how to download and set up Java on your machine. Please follow the steps mentioned below to set up the environment.
Java SE is freely available from the link Download Java. So you download a version based on your operating system.
Follow the instructions to download Java and run the .exe to install Java on your machine. Once you have installed Java on your machine, you would need to set environment variables to point to correct installation directories −
Setting up the Path for Windows 2000/XP
We are assuming that you have installed Java in c:Program Filesjavajdk directory −
Right-click on ”My Computer” and select ”Properties”.
Click on the ”Environment variables” button under the ”Advanced” tab.
Now, alter the ”Path” variable so that it also contains the path to the Java executable. Example, if the path is currently set to ”C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32”, then change your path to read ”C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32;c:Program Filesjavajdkbin”.
Setting up the Path for Windows 95/98/ME
We are assuming that you have installed Java in c:Program Filesjavajdk directory −
Edit the ”C:autoexec.bat” file and add the following line at the end − ”SET PATH=%PATH%;C:Program Filesjavajdkbin”
Setting up the Path for Linux, UNIX, Solaris, FreeBSD
Environment variable PATH should be set to point to where the Java binaries have been installed. Refer to your shell documentation if you have trouble doing this.
Example, if you use bash as your shell, then you would add the following line to the end of your ”.bashrc: export PATH=/path/to/java:$PATH”
Popular Java Editors
To write your Java programs, you need a text editor. There are many sophisticated IDEs available in the market. But for now, you can consider one of the following −
Notepad − On Windows machine you can use any simple text editor like Notepad (Recommended for this tutorial), TextPad.
Netbeans − It is a Java IDE that is open-source and free which can be downloaded from https://www.netbeans.org/index.html.
Eclipse − It is also a Java IDE developed by the eclipse open-source community and can be downloaded from https://www.eclipse.org/.
Download Passay Archive
Download the latest version of Passay jar file from Maven Repository – . In this tutorial, passay-1.6.1.jar is downloaded and copied into C:> passay folder.
OS
Archive name
Windows
passay-1.6.1.jar
Linux
passay-1.6.1.jar
Mac
passay-1.6.1.jar
Set Passay Environment
Set the PASSAY environment variable to point to the base directory location where Passay jar is stored on your machine. Assuming, we”ve extracted passay-1.6.1.jar in Passay folder on various Operating Systems as follows.
OS
Output
Windows
Set the environment variable PASSAY to C:Passay
Linux
export PASSAY=/usr/local/Passay
Mac
export PASSAY=/Library/Passay
Set CLASSPATH Variable
Set the CLASSPATH environment variable to point to the Passay jar location. Assuming, you have stored passay-1.6.1.jar in Passay folder on various Operating Systems as follows.
OS
Output
Windows
Set the environment variable CLASSPATH to %CLASSPATH%;%Passay%passay-1.6.1.jar;.;
Linux
export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:$PASSAY/passay-1.6.1.jar:.
Mac
export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:$PASSAY/passay-1.6.1.jar:.
Passay – Password Validation
A typical Password policy contains a set of rules to check a password if is compliant with organization rules. Consider the following policy:
Length of password should be in between 8 to 16 characters.
A password should not contain any whitespace.
A password should contains each of the following: upper, lower, digit and a symbol.
Example
The below example shows the validation of a password against above policy using Passay library.
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import org.passay.CharacterRule;
import org.passay.EnglishCharacterData;
import org.passay.LengthRule;
import org.passay.PasswordData;
import org.passay.PasswordValidator;
import org.passay.Rule;
import org.passay.RuleResult;
import org.passay.WhitespaceRule;
public class PassayExample {
public static void main(String[] args) {
List<Rule> rules = new ArrayList<>();
//Rule 1: Password length should be in between
//8 and 16 characters
rules.add(new LengthRule(8, 16));
//Rule 2: No whitespace allowed
rules.add(new WhitespaceRule());
//Rule 3.a: At least one Upper-case character
rules.add(new CharacterRule(EnglishCharacterData.UpperCase, 1));
//Rule 3.b: At least