How to invalidate an user session when he logs twice with the same credentials

Question

I\'m using JSF 1.2 with Richfaces and Facelets.

I have an application with many session-scoped beans and some application beans.

The user logs in with, let\'

Answer 1

The DB-independent approach would be to let the User have a static Map variable and implement HttpSessionBindingListener (and Object#equals() and Object#hashCode()). This way your webapp will still function after an unforeseen crash which may cause that the DB values don't get updated (you can of course create a ServletContextListener which resets the DB on webapp startup, but that's only more and more work).

Here's how the User should look like:

public class User implements HttpSessionBindingListener {

    // All logins.
    private static Map logins = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();

    // Normal properties.
    private Long id;
    private String username;
    // Etc.. Of course with public getters+setters.

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object other) {
        return (other instanceof User) && (id != null) ? id.equals(((User) other).id) : (other == this);
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return (id != null) ? (this.getClass().hashCode() + id.hashCode()) : super.hashCode();
    }

    @Override
    public void valueBound(HttpSessionBindingEvent event) {
        HttpSession session = logins.remove(this);
        if (session != null) {
            session.invalidate();
        }
        logins.put(this, event.getSession());
    }

    @Override
    public void valueUnbound(HttpSessionBindingEvent event) {
        logins.remove(this);
    }

}

When you login the User as follows:

User user = userDAO.find(username, password);
if (user != null) {
    sessionMap.put("user", user);
} else {
    // Show error.
}

then it will invoke the valueBound() which will remove any previously logged in user from the logins map and invalidate the session.

When you logout the User as follows:

sessionMap.remove("user");

or when the session is timed out, then the valueUnbound() will be invoked which removes the user from the logins map.