Logout/Session timeout catching with spring security

Question

I'm using spring/spring-security 3.1 and want to take some action whenever the user logs out (or if the session is timed out). I managed to get the action done for logout but for session timeout, I can't get it working.

In web.xml I only have the ContextLoaderListener specified ( can this be the issue? ) and of course the DelegatingFilterProxy.

I use the auto config like this.

    <security:http auto-config="false" use-expressions="false">
    <security:intercept-url pattern="/dialog/*"
        access="ROLE_USERS" />
    <security:intercept-url pattern="/boa/*"
        access="ROLE-USERS" />
    <security:intercept-url pattern="/*.html"
        access="ROLE-USERS" />

    <security:form-login login-page="/auth/login.html"
        default-target-url="/index.html" />
    <security:logout logout-url="/logout"
         invalidate-session="true"
        delete-cookies="JSESSIONID" success-handler-ref="logoutHandler" />
</security:http>

<bean id="logoutHandler" class="com.bla.bla.bla.LogoutHandler">
    <property name="logoutUrl" value="/auth/logout.html"/>
</bean>

The logout handler is called when user clicks logout, which will make some calls to a database.

But how do I handle the session timeout ???

One way to handle it would be to inject the username into the session when user logs in and then use an ordinary httpsessionlistener and do the same thing on session timeout.

Is there a similar way with spring security, so that when spring discovers that the session is to timeout, I can hook in there, access the Authentication and get the UserDetails from there and do the clean up.

Answer 1

I've got a simpler solution. This works for both logout and session timeout.

@Component
public class LogoutListener implements ApplicationListener<SessionDestroyedEvent> {

    @Override
    public void onApplicationEvent(SessionDestroyedEvent event)
    {
        List<SecurityContext> lstSecurityContext = event.getSecurityContexts();
        UserDetails ud;
        for (SecurityContext securityContext : lstSecurityContext)
        {
            ud = (UserDetails) securityContext.getAuthentication().getPrincipal();
            // ...
        }
    }

}

web.xml:

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.security.web.session.HttpSessionEventPublisher</listener-class>
</listener>

Answer 2

Ok, I got a solution working, it's not as good as I'd like, but it get's me to the result.

I create a bean from which I can get a hold of the ApplicationContext.

public class AppCtxProvider implements ApplicationContextAware {
private static WeakReference<ApplicationContext> APP_CTX;

@Override
public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext applicationContext)
        throws BeansException {
    APP_CTX = new WeakReference<ApplicationContext>(applicationContext);
}

public static ApplicationContext getAppCtx() {
    return APP_CTX.get();
}
}

I implement HttpSessionEventPublisher and on destroy, i get the UserDetails via sessionRegistry.getSessionInfo(sessionId)

Now I have the spring beans which I need to do the cleanup of the session and the user for whom the session timed out for.

public class SessionTimeoutHandler extends HttpSessionEventPublisher {
@Override
public void sessionCreated(HttpSessionEvent event) {
    super.sessionCreated(event);
}

@Override
public void sessionDestroyed(HttpSessionEvent event) {
    SessionRegistry sessionRegistry = getSessionRegistry();
    SessionInformation sessionInfo = (sessionRegistry != null ? sessionRegistry
            .getSessionInformation(event.getSession().getId()) : null);
    UserDetails ud = null;
    if (sessionInfo != null) {
        ud = (UserDetails) sessionInfo.getPrincipal();
    }
    if (ud != null) {
               // Do my stuff
    }
    super.sessionDestroyed(event);
}

private SessionRegistry getSessionRegistry() {
    ApplicationContext appCtx = AppCtxProvider.getAppCtx();
    return appCtx.getBean("sessionRegistry", SessionRegistry.class);
}

Answer 3

You can use SimpleRedirectInvalidSessionStrategy to redirect to a URL when an invalid requested session is detected by the SessionManagementFilter.

Sample applicationContext would be like this:

<http>
    <custom-filter ref="sessionManagementFilter" before="SESSION_MANAGEMENT_FILTER" />
<http>


<beans:bean id="sessionManagementFilter" class="org.springframework.security.web.session.SessionManagementFilter">
    <beans:constructor-arg name="securityContextRepository" ref="httpSessionSecurityContextRepository" />
    <beans:property name="invalidSessionStrategy" ref="simpleRedirectInvalidSessionStrategy " />
</beans:bean>

<beans:bean id="simpleRedirectInvalidSessionStrategy" class="org.springframework.security.web.session.SimpleRedirectInvalidSessionStrategy">
  <beans:constructor-arg name="invalidSessionUrl" value="/general/logins/sessionExpired.jsf" />
  <beans:property name="createNewSession" value="false" />
</beans:bean>
<beans:bean id="httpSessionSecurityContextRepository" class="org.springframework.security.web.context.HttpSessionSecurityContextRepository"/>

If you are using JSF, also refer to JSF 2, Spring Security 3.x and Richfaces 4 redirect to login page on session time out for ajax requests on how to handle Ajax requests as well.

UPDATE: In such a case, you can extend the HttpSessionEventPublisher and listen for sessionDestroyed events like this:

package com.examples;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpSessionEvent;

import org.springframework.security.web.session.HttpSessionEventPublisher;


public class MyHttpSessionEventPublisher extends HttpSessionEventPublisher {

   @Override
   public void sessionCreated(HttpSessionEvent event) {
      super.sessionCreated(event);
   }

   @Override
   public void sessionDestroyed(HttpSessionEvent event) {
      //do something
      super.sessionDestroyed(event);
   }

}

and then register this listener in your web.xml like this:

<listener>
    <listener-class>com.examples.MyHttpSessionEventPublisher</listener-class>
 </listener>