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Is the HttpSession per Tomcat session or per client?

 
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Hi All,
I have the following code in my java servlet application :


If I use the setAttribute and getAttribute methods to store data in the session, is that data shared with all clients who access the application running under tomcat ? I had thought if I stored something in the session that it was only used by that particular client, but I am starting to see behaviour which indicates that other clients accessing the web app are using that data.

I think I am misunderstanding something global here.

What is happening is I have a table of data and I click on a column heading to re-sort the data based on that column. I save the sort column to the session so when the table auto-refreshes it knows how to sort. Well, another client running on a seperate PC autorefreshes and now has that same sort order as the first client.

Any info appreciated, thanks!
 
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Hi Kim,

a HttpSession is specific to one particular client. The sessions are maintained via cookies or URL rewriting if cookies are disabled.

The strange behavior you're encountering may be because you have multiple browsers windows opened on one machine or multiple tabs in own browser window. This depends on the browser if it's possible to determine it as different sessions. Generally the attributes in session scope should not be accessible to other clients!

Marco
[ June 03, 2008: Message edited by: Marco Ehrentreich ]
 
Kim Kantola
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Hmm, what I have is a java-struts web app running on a server under tomcat. Then I have a client using IE 7.0 on client machine A. I also have a client using IE 6.0 on client machine B. When I sort on machine B in the 6.0 browser, the 7.0 browser on machine A resorts when it hits its refresh time (every minute).

I wonder if when I start up the second browser, on machine B, I am getting access to the session that started with machine A ?
I do use this code in one of my classes,



Could that be doing it? I pass the false so I can see if the session has expired and I need to make the user log in. I thought this would only check on the session per this client, but maybe it will go and find any open session?
 
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Sessions will not be shared across clients. Period.

The type of cross-client data pollution problem you are describing is usually a result of thread safety issues in your JSPs or servlets.

Do you use instance variables in your servlets?

Do you use the <%! %> declaration scriptlets in your JSPs?

Both of these will result in the types of problems that you are seeing.
[ June 03, 2008: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]
 
Kim Kantola
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Thank you so much for your reply. I have been reading other similar posts on JavaRanch and have seen the mention of using instance variables in servlets, and I do (I have an object that holds some static data), but not this particular sort variable. It is not saved as as an instance variable in the servlet, it is saved to a struts form variable, so not sure how this is happening.
 
Kim Kantola
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Hey, I was thinking about static data when you said "instance variables", but taking a second look at my struts action class, I do have a data member in this action class that holds the sort field, would this be an example of what you mean that could be causing me woes ?

 
Marco Ehrentreich
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Hi Kim,

like Bear already said all member variables (static or non-static) which are shared between multiple threads without correct synchronization are subject to such subtle errors or misbehaviors.

For Java web applications there's even multi-threaded access (for some objects) if you don't explicitly create multiple threads because this is done by the servlet container (Tomcat) for obvious performance reasons.

Unfortunately I don't know the architecture and concepts of Struts, so I can't tell you if this DispatchAction could be shared between multiple threads. But the problems you've described seem to be very good candidates to multi-threading issues.

Marco
 
Marco Ehrentreich
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Here's one more thing I found on the internet:

Actions have a life cycle similar to servlets. They are like servlets and they're multithreaded. We must be careful when working with member variables of an action because they are not thread safe.



So the first guess was correct! You have to take care to only use data in a thread-safe manner, which is again something I can't tell you how to do because it's partly Struts-specific.

Marco
 
Bear Bibeault
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Originally posted by Kim Kantola:
would this be an example of what you mean that could be causing me woes ?



Yes!

Your instance variables are being shared across threads. Get rid of them!
[ June 03, 2008: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]
 
Kim Kantola
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As us ranchers like to say , "Holy Sheep!".

That was it!
I removed them and the problem went away. I would have never thought of that.

Thanks again a million.

Java Ranch is the best.
 
Bear Bibeault
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Cool. It's very very important to keep your servlets/actions thread-safe.
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