Sessions are not cookies -- what you are storing in your Session is specific to
an identifier stored as a cookie, but that is all that is stored as a cookie --
an identifier that links a user to a Session object. This identifier exists for
a Session only, and is not permanent, nor should it be considered permanent. You
should use cookies to store the actual values, or persist the objects you are
storing in your Session in some sort of database.
"Lame, John" wrote:
> I want to save a customers personal information (email, name, phone)
> in an HttpSession object so that they don't have to type it in the
> next time they come to my page. I'm doing everything in one servlet
> (e.g. the servlet generates the form and is also the action for the form).
> I use a hidden form variable to know which state I'm in (e.g. should I
> print or process the form).
>
> Everything works just fine if the customer doesn't shut down their
> browser. In other words, if a customer comes to the form, fills out
> their name, submits the form, and then goes back to the form
> some time later, their name will be pre-filled. However, if the
> customer has shut down their browser at any point, then their
> personal information is lost.
>
> Here's the relevant code (using first_name as an example).
>
> === BEGIN ===
> // Get the session. I do this every time and before anything else.
> HttpSession the_session = req.getSession(true);
> if ( <printing the form>) {
> ...
> // If first_name is non-null, the "first_name" field will be
> pre-filled with this value.
> String first_name =
> (String)the_session.getValue("first_name");
> ...
> }
> else { // We must be processing a submitted form
> // the_first_name is the value of the "first_name" field or
> the empty string.
> // Note that I do this before sending output to the client.
> the_session.putValue("first_name", the_first_name);
> }
> === END ===
>
> Now I've set up my browser (Netscape Communicator 4.51) to warn me when a
> server
> attempts to write a cookie and my servlet does generate a warning. And I
> know that my browser has accepted the cookie because the first_name field
> does
> get pre-filled when I return. However, when I shut down my browser, it
> appears that
> no data is ever written to my cookies.txt file and, sure enough, when I
> bring up
> a new browser, the servlet attempts to write a brand new cookie rather than
> grabbing an old one.
>
> What am I doing wrong?
> John
>
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