Session-timeout configuration doesn't work? - java

In web.xml I have this
<session-config>
<session-timeout>2</session-timeout>
</session-config>
<listener>
<listener-class>myapplication.SessionListener</listener-class>
</listener>
In the SessionListener.java I have
public void sessionDestroyed (HttpSessionEvent event){
System.out.println("Visitor Removed!!");
}
But it seems System.out.println("Visitor Removed!!") has never been executed. I am new to Tomcat 6 and JSP. Any suggestion please?

This can have at least 3 causes:
The session has never been created. Listen on sessionCreated() as well.
You are a bit impatient. Session destroy happens lazily and at intervals. It does not happen immediately. If you fire a new request in the same session while it has been expired, then sessionDestroyed() will be called. Or if you have a bit more patience, the server will run its low-prio timer job to reap all expired sessions.
You are not using the myapplication.SessionListener class in the classpath as you think you're using, maybe the one actually in the classpath doesn't have a sysout line.

Related

Set the session-timeout never expires in java / struts1.x

How to set the session timeout never expires in struts1.x
web.xml
-------
<session-config>
<session-timeout>1440</session-timeout>
</session-config>
Set it to -1
<session-config>
<session-timeout>-1</session-timeout>
</session-config>
Warning:
This is not recommended to set session expiration infinite.
But, you should add the full details of why you are doing this, So that a proper solution you'l get.
try out this..
paste below code in your web.xml
<session-config>
<session-timeout>-1</session-timeout>
</session-config>
You can use "-1" where the session never expires. Since you do not know how much time it will take for the thread to complete.
Note: Please avoid to use infinite session timeout, it results to some memory leaks.

call method on server startup [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Is there a way to run a method/class only on Tomcat/Wildfly/Glassfish startup?
(3 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
I am trying to call a method when my webapplication starts. The purpose is to kick-off a timer that does some work at defined intervals.
how do i call a function helloworld when my jboss 7.1 web application starts up?
If you want to run some code before your web app serves any of your clients you need a ServletContextListener.
Create your listener class
import javax.servlet.*;
public class MyServletContextListener implements ServletContextListener {
public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent e) {
//Call your function from the event object here
}
public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent e) {
}
}
Put the class in WEB-INF/classes
Put a <listener> element in the web.xml file.
<listener>
<listener-class>
com.test.MyServletContextListener
</listener-class>
</listener>
Hope this helps.
Other then ContextListeners, you can also have a servlet in web.xml loading on startup:
<servlet>
<servlet-name>mytask</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>servlets.MyTaskServlet</servlet-class>
...
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
This servlet can start your task using whatever means you want, see for example this link.
But you shouldn't use that approach, imho.
Use a proven framework/lib like quartz or a similar tool. There are a lot of problems/issues in running and syncing tasks in web servers and it's better to use some proven tool than to repeat mistakes these tools already met and solved. It might take a little while to grasp but will avoid many headaches.
Jboss itself has some tooling for that purpose: scheduling and managing tasks. Never used so can't recommend.
Check out Quartz Scheduler. You can use a CronTrigger to fire at defined intervals. For example, every 5 minutes would look like this:
"0 0/5 * * * ?"
The idea is to implement the Job interface which is the task to run, schedule it using the SchedulerFactory/Scheduler, build the Job and CronTrigger and start it.
There is a very clear example here.
Use a ServletContextListener configured in your web.xml. Write the code that kicks off the timer in the contextInitialized method.

Struts2 interceptor to track last page before session timeout

I have a web application where if the user session has timedout and they try to login in again i need to redirect them to the last visited page. ONLY for session timeout, if the user logged out i donot want this mapping.
I understand that it can be done using an interceptor and a application scope mapping. But can you give me a code sample for an interceptor that updates current users url? Also my application scope object..how do i say after say 5 hrs of no relogin remove the reference to last page for that user???
What about registering an HttpSessionListener (look at this answer). That way you will be notified when session is destroyed so this is the perfect time when you can save info about last visited page to database.
Your session listener should look like this:
package com.rr87;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpSessionEvent;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpSessionListener;
public class YourSessionListener implements HttpSessionListener {
#Override
public void sessionDestroyed(HttpSessionEvent event) {
// Implement logic to save last visited page to database...
}
.
.
.
}
To register your session listener, add code below to your Web.xml:
<web-app ...>
<listener>
<listener-class>com.rr87.YourSessionListener</listener-class>
</listener>
</web-app>
And last part of an answer.. You can erase last visited page reference in database on sucesfull logout.
[EDIT]
From the official documentation, regarding session object accessible trough HttpSessionEvent:
The container creates a javax.servlet.http.HttpSessionEvent object
that is input for calls to HttpSessionListener methods. The
HttpSessionEvent class includes the following method, which your
listener can call:
HttpSession getSession()
Use this method to retrieve the session object that was created or
destroyed, from which you can obtain information as desired. See
"Introduction to Servlet Sessions" for information about the
javax.servlet.http.HttpSession interface.
Based on that I think, that you can still get data from 'destroyed' session.

SessionTimeout: web.xml vs session.maxInactiveInterval()

I'm trying to timeout an HttpSession in Java. My container is WebLogic.
Currently, we have our session timeout set in the web.xml file, like this
<session-config>
<session-timeout>15</session-timeout>
</session-config>
Now, I'm being told that this will terminate the session (or is it all sessions?) in the 15th minute of use, regardless their activity.
I'm wondering if this approach is the correct one, or should I programatically set the time limit of inactivity by
session.setMaxInactiveInterval(15 * 60); //15 minutes
I don't want to drop all sessions at 15 minutes, only those that have been inactive for 15 minutes.
Are these methods equivalent? Should I favour the web.xml config?
Now, i'm being told that this will terminate the session (or is it all sessions?) in the 15th minute of use, regardless their activity.
This is wrong. It will just kill the session when the associated client (webbrowser) has not accessed the website for more than 15 minutes. The activity certainly counts, exactly as you initially expected, seeing your attempt to solve this.
The HttpSession#setMaxInactiveInterval() doesn't change much here by the way. It does exactly the same as <session-timeout> in web.xml, with the only difference that you can change/set it programmatically during runtime. The change by the way only affects the current session instance, not globally (else it would have been a static method).
To play around and experience this yourself, try to set <session-timeout> to 1 minute and create a HttpSessionListener like follows:
#WebListener
public class HttpSessionChecker implements HttpSessionListener {
public void sessionCreated(HttpSessionEvent event) {
System.out.printf("Session ID %s created at %s%n", event.getSession().getId(), new Date());
}
public void sessionDestroyed(HttpSessionEvent event) {
System.out.printf("Session ID %s destroyed at %s%n", event.getSession().getId(), new Date());
}
}
(if you're not on Servlet 3.0 yet and thus can't use #WebListener, then register in web.xml as follows):
<listener>
<listener-class>com.example.HttpSessionChecker</listener-class>
</listener>
Note that the servletcontainer won't immediately destroy sessions after exactly the timeout value. It's a background job which runs at certain intervals (e.g. 5~15 minutes depending on load and the servletcontainer make/type). So don't be surprised when you don't see destroyed line in the console immediately after exactly one minute of inactivity. However, when you fire a HTTP request on a timed-out-but-not-destroyed-yet session, it will be destroyed immediately.
See also:
How do servlets work? Instantiation, sessions, shared variables and multithreading
Now, i'm being told that this will terminate the session (or is it all sessions?) in the 15th minute of use, regardless their activity.
No, that's not true. The session-timeout configures a per session timeout in case of inactivity.
Are these methods equivalent? Should I favour the web.xml config?
The setting in the web.xml is global, it applies to all sessions of a given context. Programatically, you can change this for a particular session.

Can I turn off the HttpSession in web.xml?

I would like to eliminate the HttpSession completely - can I do this in web.xml? I'm sure there are container specific ways to do it (which is what crowds the search results when I do a Google search).
P.S. Is this a bad idea? I prefer to completely disable things until I actually need them.
I would like to eliminate the HttpSession completely
You can't entirely disable it. All you need to do is to just not to get a handle of it by either request.getSession() or request.getSession(true) anywhere in your webapplication's code and making sure that your JSPs don't implicitly do that by setting <%#page session="false"%>.
If your main concern is actually disabling the cookie which is been used behind the scenes of HttpSession, then you can in Java EE 5 / Servlet 2.5 only do so in the server-specific webapp configuration. In for example Tomcat you can set the cookies attribute to false in <Context> element.
<Context cookies="false">
Also see this Tomcat specific documentation. This way the session won't be retained in the subsequent requests which aren't URL-rewritten --only whenever you grab it from the request for some reason. After all, if you don't need it, just don't grab it, then it won't be created/retained at all.
Or, if you're already on Java EE 6 / Servlet 3.0 or newer, and really want to do it via web.xml, then you can use the new <cookie-config> element in web.xml as follows to zero-out the max age:
<session-config>
<session-timeout>1</session-timeout>
<cookie-config>
<max-age>0</max-age>
</cookie-config>
</session-config>
If you want to hardcode in your webapplication so that getSession() never returns a HttpSession (or an "empty" HttpSession), then you'll need to create a filter listening on an url-pattern of /* which replaces the HttpServletRequest with a HttpServletRequestWrapper implementation which returns on all getSession() methods null, or a dummy custom HttpSession implementation which does nothing, or even throws UnsupportedOperationException.
#Override
public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
chain.doFilter(new HttpServletRequestWrapper((HttpServletRequest) request) {
#Override
public HttpSession getSession() {
return null;
}
#Override
public HttpSession getSession(boolean create) {
return null;
}
}, response);
}
P.S. Is this a bad idea? I prefer to completely disable things until I actually need them.
If you don't need them, just don't use them. That's all. Really :)
If you are building a stateless high load application you can disable using cookies for session tracking like this (non-intrusive, probably container-agnostic):
<session-config>
<tracking-mode>URL</tracking-mode>
</session-config>
To enforce this architectural decision write something like this:
public class PreventSessionListener implements HttpSessionListener {
#Override
public void sessionCreated(HttpSessionEvent se) {
throw new IllegalStateException("Session use is forbidden");
}
#Override
public void sessionDestroyed(HttpSessionEvent se) {
throw new IllegalStateException("Session use is forbidden");
}
}
And add it to web.xml and fix places where it fails with that exception:
<listener>
<listener-class>com.ideas.bucketlist.web.PreventSessionListener</listener-class>
</listener>
In Spring Security 3 with Java Config, you can use HttpSecurity.sessionManagement():
#Override
protected void configure(final HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
http
.sessionManagement()
.sessionCreationPolicy(SessionCreationPolicy.STATELESS);
}
Xml looks like this;
<http create-session="stateless">
<!-- config -->
</http>
By the way, the difference between NEVER and STATELESS
NEVER:Spring Security will never create an HttpSession, but will use
the HttpSession if it already exists
STATELESS:Spring Security will never create an HttpSession and it will
never use it to obtain the SecurityContext
I use the following method for my RESTful app to remove any inadvertent session cookies from being created and used.
<session-config>
<session-timeout>1</session-timeout>
<cookie-config>
<max-age>0</max-age>
</cookie-config>
</session-config>
However, this does not turn off HttpSessions altogether. A session may still be created by the application inadvertently, even if it disappears in a minute and a rogue client may ignore the max-age request for the cookie as well.
The advantage of this approach is you don't need to change your application, just web.xml. I would recommend you create an HttpSessionListener that will log when a session is created or destroyed so you can track when it occurs.
I would like to eliminate the HttpSession completely - can I do this in web.xml? I'm sure there are container specific ways to do it
I don't think so. Disabling the HttpSession would be a violation of the Servlet spec which states that HttpServletRequest#getSession should return a session or create one. So I wouldn't expect a Java EE container to provide such a configuration option (that would make it non compliant).
Is this a bad idea? I prefer to completely disable things until I actually need them.
Well, I don't really get the point, just don't put anything in the session if you don't want to use it. Now, if you really want to prevent the use of the session, you can use a Filter to replace the request with a implementation of HttpServletRequestWrapper overriding getSession(). But I wouldn't waste time implementing this :)
Update: My initial suggestion was not optimal, the "right" (cough) way would be to replace the request.
As of Servlet 3.0, you can make it so sessions are not tracked by the servlet container in any way, by adding code like this to the contextInitialized method of a ServletContextListener:
servletContext.setSessionTrackingModes(Collections.emptySet());
Javadoc.
Rather than disabling you can rewrite the URL using a URL rewrite filter eg tuckey rewrite filter. This will give Google friendly results but still allow cookie based session handling.
However, you should probably disable it for all responses as it's worse than just search engine unfriendly. It exposes the session ID which can be used for certain security exploits.
Example config for Tuckey filter:
<outbound-rule encodefirst="true">
<name>Strip URL Session ID's</name>
<from>^(.*?)(?:\;jsessionid=[^\?#]*)?(\?[^#]*)?(#.*)?$</from>
<to>$1$2$3</to>
</outbound-rule>
One cannot avoid the session creation. But you can check if you violate your own requirement at the end of a request cycle. So, create a simple servlet filter, which you place as first and after chain.doFilter throw an exception if a session was created:
chain.doFilter(request, response);
if(request.getSession(false) != null)
throw new RuntimeException("Somewhere request.getSession() was called");
For RESTful application, I simply invalidate it every time the request's lifecycle ends. There may be some web server that always creates new session when new client access whether you call request.getSession() or not.

Categories

Resources