Share Session between liferay portlet and servlet

Question

I'm trying to share a session between a liferay portlet and a servlet, running in the same WAR.

I'm setting the attribute like this in the LoginPostAction (Hook):

@Override
public void run(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ActionException {

    Gebruiker g = new Gebruiker();
    request.getSession().setAttribute("gebruiker", gebruiker);

}

Trying to get this Gebruiker object in my servlet, through an AJAX-request:

@RequestMapping(value="/haalContactGegevens", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public @ResponseBody ContactGegevensMessage getContactGegevens(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)  {

    Gebruiker gebruiker = (Gebruiker)request.getSession(true).getAttribute("gebruiker");
}

But here my 'Gebruiker-object' stays null.

What am I doing wrong?

thx

Answer 1

Easy: The LoginPostAction is handled by Liferay (even though technically implemented in your webapp's context/classloader. However, if you look at the httpServletRequest's context path, it's Liferay's.

When you implement a servlet in your own webapp, it will have its own session, unrelated to Liferay's.

You should rather implement a portlet and utilize its serveResource lifecycle method to handle the Ajax request - this will make you part of the whole portal environment. However, you should also minimize use of the Http-level session: It's prone to become a source for memory leaks sooner or later.

Note: While implementing a portlet will give you access to the HttpServletRequest (through PortalUtil), this is discouraged for the reasons given above. But as I don't know what you're trying to achieve, this would be part of the quickfix for the code that you give in your question.