CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jsfsessionjsf-2primefacesauthentication
Torge
Torge

Reputation: 63

JSF / primefaces Session - Session gets lost

I´m new at JSF programming and got a problem with my login/session which gets lost after the login.

I want to implement an easy login where a user can type in username and password. So I wrote a LoginController:

@ManagedBean
@SessionScoped
public class LoginController extends AbstractController{

     @PostConstruct
    public void initialiseSession() {
        FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getSession(true);
    }

    private String username = "null";
    private String password;
    private boolean loggedIn = false;

    @Inject 
    private EmployeeService employeeService;


    public static final String employeeSessionKey = "user";

    public LoginController() {

    }

    public String login() {
//check username and password and if true redirect to "/"
}

My login.xhtml looks like:

<h:form id="loginForm">

            <h:outputLabel style="font-size:24px" value="Bitte melden Sie sich an!"/>

            <p:panelGrid columns="2">

                <p:outputLabel id="userOutput"  for="userInput" value="Benutzername"/>
                <p:inputText id="userInput" value="#{loginController.username}"></p:inputText>
                <p:outputLabel id="passwordOutput" for="passwordInput" value="Passwort"/>
                <p:inputText id="passwordInput" type="password" value="#{loginController.password}"></p:inputText>

                <h:outputText value="Logindaten merken?" id="outputRememberLogin">
                    <p:selectBooleanCheckbox id="loginCheckbox">
                    </p:selectBooleanCheckbox>
                    <p:spacer width="10" id="loginFormLittleSpacer"></p:spacer>
                </h:outputText>

                <p:commandButton id="loginButton" value="Anmelden" action="#{loginController.login()}" ajax="false" >
                </p:commandButton>
            </p:panelGrid>
        </h:form>

So when I login the redirect works. But when I go to another .xhtml page the session gets lost.

To test this, I put 

<p:outputLabel value="#{loginController.username}"/>

on my pages. After the login, the username becomes "null".

I´m going crazy on this problem.

Any ideas?

thanks before.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 9065

Answers (2)

test
test

Reputation: 1

i used cookies for repair this kind of problems, in my application. inside Faceutils doesn't work before servlet.

Upvotes: -1

A-Diddy
A-Diddy

Reputation: 642

Your LoginController bean looks like its annotations are okay and the code looks like it should work. However, there's a couple other things that you may want to check. Some of this may be obvious but your question is missing a few details so I’m not sure what level of experience you may have and where to start in this answer. Therefore, I’m starting from the beginning (almost)…

1. Domain Name Configuration

To use sessions, you must use a qualified domain name. Sending a request to an IP address will not allow sessions to work since client browsers only send session information to a fully qualified domain name (http://example.com/). If you’re calling your web app with an IP (such as ‘http://127.0.0.1:8080/MyApp’), the session data will never be sent to your web app and you will have a new session created with each request. Make sure you’re using a fully qualified domain name and path with each request to your application, for example ‘http://localhost:8080/MyApp’.

2. Application Configuration

Check that your web application’s <session-config> configuration is setup correctly. The default config should allow your code to work without having to add anything specific, so if you didn’t add anything, don’t worry about this. However, you may want to make sure there’s nothing that may be preventing the sessions from being reused.

  • Session cookies should be enabled (<tracking-mode>COOKIE</tracking-mode>)
  • Timeout should be long enough to not expire before the second request (<session-timeout>60</session-timeout>)
  • The cookie path should be correctly set for your use (<path>/</path>)

The following is a common session config that I use…

<session-config>
    <session-timeout>60</session-timeout>  
    <tracking-mode>COOKIE</tracking-mode>
    <cookie-config>
        <path>/</path>                       
        <http-only>true</http-only> 
        <secure>false</secure>
    </cookie-config>
</session-config>

3. Session Cookie Tracking on the Client

If the above points don’t resolve the issue, you can really start diving into the session tracking by monitoring the request and response traffic between your app and the client browser. The session info is passed back and forth by a cookie (or query string parameter if cookies are disabled) named ‘JSESSIONID’. Its value will be the ID of the unique session and must be the same for each request to ensure that your web application tracks the same session. The below highlights some of the things to look for…

Make sure the ‘JSESSIONID’ session cookie is sent to the client browser correctly and is being sent back with each subsequent request. You can do this with Chrome or Safari's web developer tools (under the 'Network' tab) or with a separate utility, such as Wireshark.

  • Make sure the 'JSESSIONID' cookie exists in the response from the first request… this will let you know that your web app is at least creating the session and response cookie.
  • Make sure the second request from the client browser is passing the 'JSESSIONID' cookie back... this is the only way your web app knows which existing session to use.
  • Make sure the 'JESSIONID' cookie has a path of '/' (which may display as 'N/A' in the browser) or the path of your web app ('/MyApp', for example)… the client browser will only send cookies to the domain(s) and path associated with each. For example, if your login page is 'http://example.com/MyApp/login', the 'JSESSIONID' cookie may have a path of '/MyApp' (by default), which will not be returned if the following request is made to 'http://example.com/' (without the '/MyApp' path). The default path is the name of your web app (‘/MyApp’) and can be changed using the <path> config item indicated above.

4. Session Management within the Bean (Additional Information)

In your initialiseSession() method, the session object returned by FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getSession(true); isn't being saved and this line is essentially doing nothing. The @SessionScoped annotation will have already created a session and added the ‘JSESSIONID’ cookie to the response before initialiseSession() is called. Therefore, the only reason to call getSession(true) is if you want to save the session to a private object within the bean, which would be like this...

@ManagedBean
@SessionScoped
public class LoginController extends AbstractController{

    // Create a global, private member for storing the session data...
    private HttpSession session;

    @PostConstruct
    public void initialiseSession() {
        // Assign the session to the global member…
        session = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getSession(true); 
    }

…

Again, the call to the getSession(true) isn’t necessary in your example since the SessionScoped bean will have already created the session. The above code is only necessary if you intended to update or use the session object, for example add an attribute or modify a setting.

In summary

Double-check the above points 1 – 3. My assumption would be that the ‘JSESSIONID’ cookie isn’t being sent back in subsequent requests. If you can confirm that the ‘JSESSIONID’ cookie (with the same value) is being included in each request then the problem isn't related to the session and may be related to the code in your login() method.

Upvotes: 3

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