Federation Manager Guide › Open Format Cookie Details › Contents of the Open Format Cookie

Contents of the Open Format Cookie

The federation open format cookie lets applications assert user attributes to Federation Manager and consume user attributes encapsulated by Federation Manager. The open format cookie has the following general characteristics:

• The cookie is accessible by applications written in any programming language.
• The cookie content consists of a string of UTF-8 bytes, which supports international character sets.
• The combined size in UTF-8 bytes of each name/value pair precedes the name/value pair.
• Space characters are added for legibility.
• The cookie is simple to parse and easily extensible.

The open format cookie contains the following property information:

• Cookie Version
• Name ID
• Name ID Format
• Session ID
• AuthnContext
• UserDN (same as User ID)

The following diagram shows the open format:

Key:

• Ver — the cookie format version; for Federation Manager r12.1, this value is 1.
• Sp — an ASCII space character, used only to improve readability
• Properties — information about the principal
• Attributes — SAML attributes from the Assertion
• Cnt — the number of name value pairs that follow, represented in ASCII
• Sz — the length of the name or value that follows
• ValCnt — the number of attribute values that follow. For Federation Manager r12.1, multiple values for an attribute are not supported. This value must be set to 1.

The Backus-Naur Form (BNF) for this format is following (0* means 0 or more; 1* means at least 1).

• DIGIT = ASCII digit (0 through 9)
• CHAR = UTF-8 character
• Sp = ASCII space (character 32)
• Token = 1*CHAR
• Cookie = Version Sp Properties Attributes
• Version = 1*DIGIT
• Cnt = 1*DIGIT
• Properties = Cnt 1*PPair
• Attributes = Cnt 0*APair
• ValCnt = 1*DIGIT
• PPair = Sz Sp Name Sp Sz Sp Value
• APair = Sz Sp Name Sp ValCnt Sp Sz Sp Value
• Sz = 1*DIGIT
• Name = Token

Value = Token