Non-interactive plugins

Some plugins, typically selectors, do not need to interact with the user to do their job. Making these plugins API-capable is straight-forward.

You still implement the AuthnApiPlugin interface, but you can just return null from the getApiSpec() method. And then you override the default implementation of getApiPluginDescriptor() and return an AuthnApiPluginDescriptor instance with the interactive flag set to false. As with many other classes in the SDK, there is an AuthnApiPluginDescriptor.Builder class to help in creating the descriptor.

When interactive is false, PingFederate knows that it never needs to redirect when it encounters your selector. If the request is occurring on the API endpoint, PingFederate can immediately call selectContext(). The same is true if the request is occurring on a front-channel endpoint, such as /as/authorization.oauth2.

If your selector does not implement AuthnApiPlugin, then PingFederate assumes that only a front-channel endpoint can call your selector. If PingFederate encounters your selector while executing an API request, PingFederate will send a RESUME response to the API client so that the user is redirected to PingFederate.