CXF defines a TokenStore interface for caching SecurityTokens in the WS-Security runtime module. Prior to CXF 2.6, a simple default HashMap based approach was used to cache security tokens. In CXF 2.6, Ehcache is used to provide a suitable default TokenStore implementation to cache security tokens. Tokens are stored until the expiry date of the token if it exists, provided it does not exceed the maximum storage time of 12 hours. If it exceeds this, or if there is no expiry date provided in the security token, it is cached for the default storage time of 1 hour. If the token is expired then it is not cached. This default storage time is configurable. Note that while Ehcache is a compile time dependency of the WS-Security module in CXF, it can be safely excluded in which case CXF will fall back to use the simple HashMap based cache, unless the user specifically wants to implement an alternative TokenStore implementation and configure this instead.
Apache CXF 2.6 provides support for configuring caching via the following JAX-WS properties:
- org.apache.cxf.ws.security.tokenstore.TokenStore - The TokenStore instance to use to cache security tokens. By default this uses the EHCacheTokenStore if Ehcache is available. Otherwise it uses the MemoryTokenStore.
- ws-security.cache.config.file - Set this property to point to a configuration file for the underlying caching implementation. By default the cxf-ehcache.xml file in the CXF rt-ws-security module is used.