Getting a value from HttpServletRequest.getRemoteUser() in Tomcat without modifying application

Question

(Using Java 6 and Tomcat 6.)

Is there a way for me to get HttpServletRequest.getRemoteUser() to return a value in my development environment (i.e. localhost) without needing to modify my application's web.xml file?

The reason I ask is that the authentication implementation when the app is deployed to a remote environment is handled by a web server and plugged-in tool. Running locally I obviously do not have the plugged-in tool or a separate web server; I just have Tomcat 6. I am trying to avoid adding code to my application merely to support development on my localhost.

I am hoping there is a modification I can make to the context.xml or server.xml files that will let me set the remote user ID or that will try to pull it from a HTTP header or something.

Answer 1

Use a local, file-based realm for testing. Check your conf/tomcat-users.xml and create roles and users for your application and enable the security constraints in your web.xml. There are good examples in the tomcat-users.xml.