This is a great information. I'd like to stray a little off topic if that's okay .. still in the same ballpark.
I like to invent new doodads in software and see if I can do it better. Over the years, like many, I built-up a library of things that worked best for me over the years. One of those was the delegation of context management to my own code. I have Alias and Domain objects in my database that allow me to map URL's to domains (HTML5 applications that use some really lightweight server side JSON components). It works great and I can change configuration by updating the database. Awesome for deployment and configuration management. For now, I put a "deviceId" in localStorage on the browser (I'm only concerned in supporting modern browsers), and I send that with every request. Device is an object in my database as well, and I look up the device ID at the start of processing, which then can be associated with any number of other data/field level security measures. Rest assured, now, I've worked all this out, and I have developed dozens of applications that all work great. I could move deviceId to the header if I wanted to, or maybe a cookie. So far, I like it, it's fast, it's simple, and works great to solve session affinity problems. Local storage is mapped to the root domain, so I have access to my deviceId regardless of the context. My question is this .. how could this come back to bite me? I've enjoyed the convenience of SSO for all contexts deployed under a particular domain, but I would have a little code to write to do single sign on across domains because of the way the browser manages localStorage (I would do a simple token exchange to SSO, but I haven't had that use case, yet). I have always struggled to shoe-horn some of the session management into my (sometimes admittedly advanced and unpredictable) application requirements. Would love to hear your thoughts. Have a good one, John DB2DOM.COM On 4/11/19, Jerry Malcolm <techst...@malcolms.com> wrote: > On 4/11/2019 4:22 PM, Christopher Schultz wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA256 >> >> Jerry, >> >> On 4/11/19 15:29, Jerry Malcolm wrote: >>> Alternatively, if I had a better understanding of how sessions are >>> managed by both TC and the browser, it might help me figure out >>> what is going wrong. I know a session key is generated by TC and >>> sent back in a response. And I'm assuming that the browser must >>> return that session key on subsequent calls. But if there are >>> several webapps on domain, how does the browser differentiate which >>> session key to send back on a subsequent response? Is it just >>> understood that the first 'folder' level under the domain (i.e. >>> context name) is always a different session key? >>> (myDomain.com/order vs. myDomain/account)? Or does the browser >>> send all session keys back per domain and let TC figure out which >>> one, if any, to use? Again, just looking for a little education >>> here.... >> Do you know if HTTP cookies or URL-parameters are being used for >> session-management? If you aren't sure, try logging-in to your >> application and look at the URLs and cookies. >> >> Typically, a web application will use cookies with the name >> JSESSIONID. If the session identifier is tracked in the URL, then >> you'll see ";jsessionid=[id]" in your URLs after the path but before >> the query string. >> >> It's very easy to "lose" a URL-tracked session id because every single >> URL generated by your application must include that parameter. A sinle >> miss can cause the session to be lost by the client. If you are using >> SSO (always with a cookie), it can mask the dropping of the session in >> this way. >> >> It's harder to "lose" a session cookie since the browser typically >> manages that. Cookies are tracked per web-application using each >> application's path. The browser should only return a single cookie for >> a given path. If you have applications that share a URL space (e.g. >> /master and /master/sub and /master/sub2) then things can get very >> confusing for the browser and the server. It's best not to overlap >> URL-spaces in this way. >> >> Are you using clustering or anything else like that which might also >> cause session-ids to change? >> >> - -chris > > Thank you so much for the info... I think we're getting somewhere.... I > am definitely using cookies and not url parms for the session id. (no > clustering). I went into the firefox debugger and located the cookie > storage for the site. I found a cookie for each webapp context that I > am using. That makes sense. I think I know what is happening. > Correct my assumptions here: > > I have a webapp with context /order. There is a JSESSIONID cookie for > /order as expected. I assume that every time I send a URL from the > browser with the /order context, the browser will correctly send the > /order session cookie. So far, so good... > > But.... I have a rewrite rule "/storefront" that maps to one of the > /order urls. I assume the browser knows nothing about rewrites, so the > browser is going to assume that "/storefront" is simply a different > webapp context that it doesn't have a session id cookie for, and > therefore doesn't send anything. Therefore, when the rewritten url > becomes another /order url, TC gets an /order request but with no > session id, and therefore creates a new session and sends it back for > the browser to store (replace) as the /order session id. > > So assuming I have analyzed this correctly, that can explain precisely > what I'm seeing. Understanding the problem is a big step... But now I > have to figure out how to get around it and make it do what I want. At > this point, I see three options: > > 1) remove all rewrites from httpd. That is going to be massive, very > difficult, and non-trivial. And I'll also have to come up with way to > handle multi-client variations, etc. that I have been mapping by simply > using different rewrites on each site. This one is not even close to my > first choice.... > > 2) Could I perhaps send my own additional JSESSIONID cookies with the > current "/order" session id for the rewrite 'fake contexts' such as > "/storefront" so that the browser will basically send a copy of the > /order session id with the /storefront url? > > 3) I really don't care to have separate sessions for each webapp context > anyway. In fact, I'd prefer it if there was one session / sessionId for > the enter application (all 10 contexts). Is there any way to send the > session id cookie keyed as simply "/" instead of "/<context>"? All URLs > to the domain whether rewrite aliases or actually urls would match this > one JSESSIONID cookie and therefore would always send the JSESSIONID. > If that would work, that would solve everything and all rewrites would > still work as they do now. > > Recommendation for which way to go? #3 is my favorite (but I like to > dream...). But if #2 will work, I'll go with it. Just desperately > trying to prevent having to do #1.... > > Thanks again for all the help. > > Jerry > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org
