ActiveDirectory authentication only, currently, problem, moment, reason

amy

Hello alli have a webapp which is  currently usign LDAP for authenticating our users.
At the moment i am using a LdapAuthenticationProvider along  with ldap.authenticator.BindAuthenticator (and a user string, as i can login anonymously)

I need to move to ActiveDirectory authentication very soon...

the problem i have is that i can't bind anonymously to AD, so will need to login.

That would be enough for me as the only reason i use AD is to authenticate users (roles are stored somewhere else).

i have few issues here:
I have tried to implement  my own BindAuthenticator, which creates a DirContext with userCredentials., this way

Code:
@Override       public DirContextOperations authenticate(Authentication authentication)       {try{    String principal = userPrefix + authentication.getPrincipal();    String password  = (String) authentication.getCredentials();        Hashtablelt;String, Stringgt; env = new Hashtablelt;String, Stringgt;();    env.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, quot;com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactoryquot;);     env.put(Context.PROVIDER_ucl, ucl);     env.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, principal);     env.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, password);     DirContext context = new InitialDirContext(env);            DirContextOperations authAdapter = new DirContextAdapter();    authAdapter.addAttributeValue(quot;ldapContextquot;, context);        return authAdapter;}catch(Exception e){    throw new IllegalArgumentException(e);}           }
The problem i have with the code above (beign new to LDAP as well) is that for every authentication i need to create a DirContext.
Will i run then  out of connection in LDAP?  
Ideally when a user logs off, i should 'close' the connection to ldap, is that correct?
but where do i do that if i use my custom LdapAuthenticator? at teh end of the DirContext  creation?

w/kindest regardsmarco