Detecting Browser Close or Tab Close without Impacting other functionality

Question

I want to invalidate the session when the user close the tab or browser in my GWT Application. I saw lot of threads Confirm Browser Exit in GWT but didn't get the solution which i am looking for. This should not fire when user refresh the browser(it shouldn't invalidate the session) and even it should not fire when user navigate to other screen or download any file.Any Idea?

Answer 1

There is no way to tell the difference between closing a window or navigating away in various ways. You may be able to get around refreshing a page issue by creating a timer on the server side to see if a user requests your page again within a certain period of time, but it's not clear what benefits you get.

From a user experience view, you should offer a Sign Out (Log out) button or something similar, so a user can clearly indicate an intent to leave your app. Also, you can set an inactive timeout on your session, to invalidate session after a period of inactivity.