Servlet Timeout in two ways

[Anant Jagania]

Hi All,

There are two ways of setting session time-out for servlet. one is giving in web.xml and another is setting the Inactive interval by calling setMaxInactiveInterval on HttpSession.

What are the conceptual differences between these two ways?

Regards,
Anant

[Ulf Dittmer]

There is no conceptual difference, as both settings affect the same parameter. The one in web.xml is used if setMaxInactiveInterval is not called.
[ March 15, 2007: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]

[Christophe Verré]

Be careful that the parameter for setMaxInactiveInterval is expressed in seconds, whereas the one in the deployment descriptor is in minutes.

[Sunil Vasudevan]

There is one more difference.

When we configure session timeout in web.xml, it is applicable to all the sessions created.

When we call setMaxInactiveInterval(int interval) on a session object, then the timeout is set only for that specific session object.

If you have specified a timeout value in web.xml and also calling setMaxInactiveInterval(int interval) on a session object, then for that session object, value set in setMaxInactiveInterval() will be considered for timeout.

[Anant Jagania]

thanks all. i understood the difference..