Reuse object and its methods in code of multiple @ManagedBeans

Question

I want to set my User object only once through my @RequestScoped LoginBean. Then I want to reuse its setters, getters and an isLoggedIn() method in other @ManagedBean through CDI.

Request Scoped Class that Sets User Object

@ManagedBean
@RequestScoped
public class LoginBean {

    @ManagedProperty(value = "#{bean}")
    protected Bean bean;

    private String username;
    private String password;

    public String login() {
        bean.setLoggedInUser(userDao.getUser(username));
        return "index";
    }

    // Getters and Setters, including for the @ManagedProperty baseBean.

}

SessionScoped Class that Stores User Object

@ManagedBean
@SessionScoped
public class Bean {

    private User loggedInUser = null;

    public boolean isLoggedIn() {
        return loggedInUser != null;
    }

    // Getters and setters for loggedInUser

}

Class Where I Want To Refer to loggedInuser

@ManagedBean
@RequestScoped
public class ShowUserDetails extends Bean {

    private Details details = new Details();

    public void showDetails() {
    if(isLoggedIn()) { // THIS ALWAYS RETURNS FALSE
          // Do stuff
        }
    }

}

Solutions So Far

• I can list a Bean @ManagedProperty in every single Backing Bean that needs the loggedInUser. This seems wrong as I am copy-pasting two lines in every class.
• I can get the instance of Bean class from FacesContext using context.getApplication().evaluateExpressionGet() . This allows me to have one method to retrieve Bean instance in a superclass, however this also seems wrong. That said, this is the method I will go with if I am unable to find a pure CDI solution.

Answer 1

You are worried about adding two lines of code once in each bean, yet you do want to write

if(isLoggedIn()) { // THIS ALWAYS RETURNS FALSE
      // Do stuff
    }

And most likely many times in a bean (and most likely also things in an else statement).

Then I'd certainly go fo using annotations and interceptors

See also

• https://code.google.com/p/jee6-cdi/source/browse/tutorial/cdi-aop-example/src/main/java/org/cdi/advocacy/security/
• http://balusc.blogspot.nl/2013/01/apache-shiro-is-it-ready-for-java-ee-6.html

Answer 2

My solution was to use the HttpSession to store the User object instead of having a class member variable. This allowed me to have one class that handled the getting/setting and all the other classes could simply call 'getLoggedinUser' to retrieve the entire object without hitting the DB.

private HttpSession session = (HttpSession) FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getSession(true);
private static final String LOGGED_IN_USER = "loggedInUser";

public User getLoggedInUser() {
    return (User) session.getAttribute(LOGGED_IN_USER);
}

public void setLoggedInUser(User user) {
    session.setAttribute(LOGGED_IN_USER, user);
}`