Question: What does `$component` mean?

[timrourke]

Q	A
Bug report?	no
Feature request?	no
BC Break report?	no
RFC? / Specification	no

I have a generic question about the name of the $component argument one can pass to a Component/Checker/TokenTypeSupport.php implementation. What does $component mean in this context? It looks like it's the index of something referred to as a recipient on the token. Would it be better referred to as an $index? I'm not familiar enough with some of the more exotic forms of JWTs to guess from the name $component what that indicates. Perhaps I've overlooked something in the docs?

https://github.com/web-token/jwt-framework/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=retrieveTokenHeaders&type=

Thanks for the insight! Love this library.

[Spomky]

As Phil Karlton wrote, naming things is quite hard.
It is clear that component variable should be renamed in something else (e.g. index as you proposed).

The JWS and JWE Json General Serialization modes allow several signatures/recipients.
The header should be the union of the protected, unprotected or per recipient headers (see 4. in RFC7515 section 5.2 for JWS) hence it is required to know which signature or recipient is concerned.
If there is only one signature/recipient (99% of use cases), you should not care of that variable, otherwise it is important to use it as it may lead to unwanted behavior.

I will rename that variable for the next minor release.
I will also add clarifications in each PHPDoc annotations (not only that method but for the whole project).

[Spomky]

I renamed that variable and added some PHPDoc annotations.
Hope it helps. Feel free to reopen if needed.

[Spomky]

Tagged v1.1.0-beta1; Will be marked as stable soon.

[github-actions]

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