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How to make legacy HttpServlet Spring web aware

We have a legacy HttpServlet class that is the backbone of our application. At this point, the app doesn't have any Spring libraries in it. We are looking to introduce Spring, in particular so we can use Spring-Data in conjunction with Hibernate.
I was wondering if there is a way to make this legacy Servlet web-aware so we can have Request and Session scopes injected. In particular, we would like to be able to inject the HttpServletRequest object into some beans.
One of the main reasons we need to do this, is for a weird multi-tenancy solution we have in place. Hibernate can handle Multi-Tenancy using a combination of a AbstractMultiTenantConnectionProvider and a CurrentTenantIdentifierResolver When using Spring-JPA's Repositories, you lose control of the session creation. One way to take care of this is to implement the CurrentTenantIdentifierResolver Since our tenant identifier is partially determined by something that comes in on the request, it is necessary to inject the request into our CurrentTenantIdentifierResolver implementation.
Also, it would be great to get Spring involved for all the other benefits it can provide in a legacy app.
Do you know how we can accomplish this?

You can define org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener within your web.xml, which will load your spring application context.
Then, within your servlet code, you access the context using WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(servletContext) helper method.
Take a look at the Spring docs here:
http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/#web-integration-common

Transaction like logic while using web services

There are several update staments that can be done by web service calls. Those staments should be transactional; they must be done if and only if all can be done.
I cannot change the web services. what I can do is try to change all of them, if one of them fails I change back the previous ones. This plain sloution is pretty ugly.
Is there a more elegant approach to this problem ?
note: I am using JavaEE, SOAP, Spring MVC.

we have a #TransactionAttribute for different targets(method and class).
If you apply this annotation to a class with appropriate TransactionAttributeType(Constants) then that transaction strategy will apply to all the methods inside that class i.e You can keep all calls to your update statements in this class and inject this class where you are having your web services, so if even one update call fails it will rollback

You can write a Transactional class which uses Apache HTTP utils to call these web services one by one. ( This class should have a #Transactional annotation)

REST authorization with exteral roles

I have a scenario where I have roles and permissions in a different system (where i need to make a REST call) and that system will specify whether I can access a particular resource or not.
I need to intercept my controller methods and that Interceptor should talk to external service and figure out the authorization. I am using just spring boot (no spring security).
It should be similar to this with JAX-RS but I'm looking in spring context. Can I achieve this using #RolesAllowed?

I would recommend using an interceptor:
http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/mvc.html#mvc-handlermapping

You need to have a configuration that you will annotate with (check spring documentation)
#EnableGlobalMethodSecurity(jsr250Enabled = true)
Then you will have to create your own access decision manager and register your own roles. With this you should be able to annotate your controllers to a specific user like #RolesAllowed("admin")

springframework controller from standalone java code

We have Spring MVC application. One module requires to call the Spring Controller from standalone java app.
Can I do that?

Dead easy:
new java.net.URL("http://localhost:8080/path/to/your/controller").openStream();
Just like you would do it in the browser. If you want to call the Java code directly, do not publish your controllers. Instead, extract business logic and provide it as a library.

Yes.
It's a POJO, especially if you use Spring 3.x. The newest versions don't even extend an interface or base class.

I'd call it through its http interface as it's a Spring controller. You could use a clientside http request and use the response. I'm guessing the method you wish to call does not resolve to a view, if that's the case then just use something like the RestTemplate class that comes with Spring 3.
Not sure if it would be a good idea to call it directly as Spring MVC projects are usually hidden away inside servlet wars.

Spring 2.5 managed servlets: howto?

Correct me if anything is wrong.
As I understand, all Spring functionality, namely DI works when beans are got thru
Spring Context, ie getBean() method.
Otherwise, none can work, even if my method is marked #Transactional and I will
create the owning class with a new operator, no transaction management will be provided.
I use Tomcat 6 as a servlet container.
So, my question is: how to make Servlet methods managed by Spring framework.
The issue here is that I use a framework, and its servlets extend the functionality of
basic java Servlets, so they have more methods. Still, web.xml is present in an app as usual.
The thing is that I do not control the servlets creation flow, I can only override a few methods
of each servlet, the flow is basically written down in some xml file, but I control this process
using a graphical gui.
So, basically, I only add some code to a few methods of each Servlet.
How to make those methods managed by Spring framework? The basic thing I need to do is
making these methods transactional (#Transactional).
comment to Bozho:
#Bozho Let's see. In these servlets' methods I work with framework capabilities, let's say special variables that are got and saved in the current session. And what is needed, is looping through those framework-based collections while saving some values in a database. What you suggest is introducing a new very complex object, so that it could be passed to a service layer. (Service layer will not know anything about framework, its classes and objects kept in current Session! First, we "wrap" framework based collections to such a object, so copy everything into it. Then, again, the Service layer method should either save changes in a database or, worse case, return a new complex object so that Servlet framework method could update framework variables depending on the result of Service layer method execution. It is a workaround but do you think it is a good idea?

You can also define your servlets directly in the Spring application context. You'll need a "proxy" servlet registered in web.xml and delegating to the servlet instance which is configured as bean in the applicationContext.xml. Proxy servlet is configured with the name of the target servlet bean, it discovers this bean via WebApplicationContextUtils.getRequiredWebApplicationContext().getBean(...) and delegates all the processing to the target servlet. In this case an instance of your servlet is completely managed by Spring.

I'd suggest restructuring your code - making servlet methods transactional is not a good thing to do. Put the transactional logic in a separate, service class, and either
obtain these spring-managed classes by WebApplicationContextUtils.getRequiredWebApplicationContext().getBean(..) or
in your servlet init() method obtain the ApplicationContext with the above method and call appCtx.getAutowireCapableBeanFactory().autowireBean(this). This way you can inject the transactional classes in your servlet as if it was spring-managed.
Now, you can do all this, but it is definitely not a beautiful way to go. I'd suggest using Spring MVC or any other MVC framework (which support spring integration of its components)
If this is all not possible, as a last resort I think you can use #Configurable (on your servlets) with a <context:load-time-weaver/>.

You should take a look how Spring proxy filters:
http://grepcode.com/file/repository.springsource.com/org.springframework/org.springframework.web/3.0.2/org/springframework/web/filter/DelegatingFilterProxy.java
In theory you could easily make the same sort of proxy for servlets and DispatcherServlet is sort of a proxy.