Prevent Tomcat from serializing session when running locally from IntelliJ IDE

Question

I am successfully running Tomcat 8.5.16 locally from IntelliJ 2017.2 Ultimate edition via the bundled Tomcat and TomEE Integration plugin.

When stopping the Tomcat server, I get errors about some objects in my session not being serializable. I do not care to serialize the sessions, as I expect to start fresh user sessions in the case of a server-bounce or such event.

➠ How to stop Tomcat from serializing sessions when invoked from IntelliJ?

Are you sure it's specific to IntelliJ IDEA? Do you mean that you don't get these messages if you start/stop Tomcat outside of IntelliJ IDEA and deploy your app manually? — CrazyCoder, Aug 03 '17 at 21:46
@CrazyCoder I've not gotten that far yet, have not run my app independently without IntelliJ. — Basil Bourque, Aug 03 '17 at 21:53

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 15 '17 at 00:10

Tomcat feature

This is a pure tomcat feature, independent of how you start it. From the docs:

Disable Session Persistence

As documented above, every web application by default has standard manager implementation configured, and it performs session persistence across restarts. To disable this persistence feature, create a Context configuration file for your web application and add the following element there:

<Manager pathname="" />

Example of disabling session persistence

For example, in the META-INF folder of your web app, add a context.xml file as shown below.

<!-- 'context.xml' file in 'META-INF' folder of your web app -->
<Context>
    <Manager pathname="" />
</Context>

You should be able to add this into your project in your IDE. You may need to explicitly add the META-INF folder if one is not already configured within your project. Here is a screen shot in IntelliJ 2017 after adding the folder and file.

Prevent Tomcat from serializing session when running locally from IntelliJ IDE

1 Answers1

Tomcat feature

Example of disabling session persistence