Normally, whenever the Admin App is launched using the standard URL ( http://localhost:8780/konakartadmin/ ), the administrator is presented with a login panel where he must enter his credentials in order to gain access to the application. In a multi-store environment there is also a drop list of store names so that the administrator may choose the store that he wants to log in for.

By using a Launcher servlet, the startup process of the Admin App may be modified as follows:

The store id may be passed to the launcher servlet so that the administrator is not given the possibility to choose a store from the drop list. The drop list is no longer shown on the login panel. An example of calling the launcher for storeId = store1:

http://localhost:8780/konakartadmin/launcher?storeId=store1

In order to achieve Single Sign On, credential checking may be delegated to the AdminAppAuthenticationMgr class. This class has a method to authenticate the request and a method that returns a URL that may redirect to an SSO login screen if the administrator isn't logged in. If the authentication method determines that the customer is already logged in, then the Admin App will start without displaying the login screen at all. Note that the user identified by the userId returned by the authentication method, must exist in the KonaKart database as an Admin User.

The source code of the launcher and authentication manager are supplied in the /KonaKart/custom/adminappn/src/com/konakartadmin/servlet directory.