Good morning.
Thanks a lot for the shared thoughts and ideas about HttpSession management. Last night I decided to give the Servlet Spec a second try and here's what I think is relevant to this topic:
- A session is considered "new" untils a client joins it [calls to HttpSession.isNew() return "true"]
- A client joins a session when session tracking info has been returned to the server, indicating that the session has been established.
- The container always (?) creates a session object for a given user request regardless of its nature (HTML, JSP...), but waits until the client sends tracking info back to consider the client as part of the new session
I'm yet to read "RFC 2964 - Use of HTTP State Management", but from the Spec and your feedback I think a practical way to address this problem is whith the mecanism suggested by Dennis and Frank:
- If the session exists, check for required elements and place them there if they are missing / Check for some known object in session; if it's not there, the user hasn't been validated.
Besides being practical, this approach makes complete sense since -as Bob accurately points out: "The basic HttpSession object is for state management, not evidence of authentication".
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. Should I trip over again in this matters I'd sure come back... :^)
Regards,
Carlos
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Feretich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Tomcat Users List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 12:25 AM
Subject: Re: [HttpSession creation: When & How]
When Tomcat intercepts an access to a protected resource and redirects to your login form, it saves your initial request by attaching it to the session object. If the login is successful, it retrieves the saved request and redirects to it. If you don't have an active session, it creates one to perform the save.
The basic HttpSession object is for state management, not evidence of authentication (see best practice RFC-2964 2.2.2). (You may attach authentication info to the session object.)
Regards, Bob Feretich
Dennis Payne wrote:You can use the session.invalidate() if you need to before creating a new session (I did not use this approach).
With my system, if the session exists we check for required elements and place them there if they are missing. Every thirty minutes the session automatically invalidates. At that point we create a new session and simply repeat the check for required elements. All of this is invisible to the user who logs in only once. The only information that stays from session to session is data that is persisted in (written to) the database and put in the session for servlet/JSP use.
If I understand correctly the HTTP Session is initiated by the web server when authentication takes place (I only have experience with basic authentication).
Other wiser sources may clarify...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11-29-2004 17:31 >>>
Good evening.
My question is about HttpSession objects creation and destruction
within a Servlet/JSP container. I'm using the JBoss/Tomcat bundle (versions 3.2.3/4.1.29) with a database realm properly configured. Here's how
things work so far:
1. User goes to a predefined Welcome File (index.html) 2. Within the welcome file there's a link to a protected resource (wich
happens to be the application's "main screen") 3. The user clicks the link and the login page appears. 4. The user enters login/password and logs on successfully or is redirected to an error page.
Up to this point everything works fine, but the thing that I don't understand is that the moment the user clicks the link that points to a
protected resource an HttpSession object is created by the server even
though the user hasn't been authenticated. This behavior kinda ruin my
plans because I have a Session Creation/Destruction Listener that is supposed
to detect a session creation event in order to be able to place some
things (objects) in that user session, but it seems that the created session
for the unauthenticated is "recycled" after authentication and my session lifecycle listener is no longer useful (the session already exists)
I've looked into the Servlet spec but couldn't find anything clarifying
enough... I'f anyone has any comments, tips, thoughts on this issue I'd like to hear'em... :^)
Regards,
Carlos... ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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