I have this case where I have two session-scoped beans. One is used for Login-functionality. So this bean remembers what the current user is, which it sets after a user has successfully logged in.
There is another session scoped bean that allows the user to configure some stuff, which is also supposed to be be kept along the session. The user can go back to the configuration-site whenever he wants and see his old (from the same session) data. Important to know is that the user does not need to be logged in to use this site. Imagine like a cart on a webshop, with many shops you can put stuff in the cart before even logging in and it will remain throughout your session. Here is where it gets tricky: On this configuration-site, the user can access some special functionality, such as permanently saving his configuration-stuff, but only if he is logged in. If not, he simply won't have the option. Again, very similar to a webshop, if you actually want to order the cart of your session you usually have to log in at that point.
The problem is that if the user first goes onto the configuration-site, then this session bean will be created first. The session bean retrieves the user by a binding-annotation (CurrentUser) which is @Provided by the Login-Bean via it's getter for the current user. However, at creation time of the configuration-site bean, there is no current user. Now, if the user then decides to go and login, the configuration-site bean will still think that there is no currentUser, since that field was initialized when the bean was initialized and there is no logic that will update it.
How can I handle this situation? Do I have to start manually putting and retrieving stuff from the Session-Objects? So far everything was handled automatically by JSF / Application Server simply because of the @SessionScoped annotations.
Edit: Here goes some code to explain the situation further:
The Login-Bean:
@SessionScoped
@Named
public class LoginUserManager implements Serializable {
private UserBean currentUser;
// Logic that does the login and set the currentUser if successfull
// ...
// "Produces" currentUsers for other beans, that want to inject it simply
// via the @CurrentUser annotation, see below
@Produces
@CurrentUser
public UserBean getCurrentUser() {
return currentUser;
}
}
Then there is the configuration-manager
@SessionScoped
@Named
public class ConfigurationManager implements Serializable {
// Session based configuration data here
// And, the current user (if any)
@CurrentUser
private UserBean currentUser;
}
The CurrentUser annotation should be a simple "binding annotation" if I understood correctly. It's taken from a snippet I saw on the internet, to be honest. I found it elegant, thought it's smooth to read and functionally identical to injecting the LoginUserManager directly and then calling it's getCurrentUser() getter.
@Retention(RUNTIME)
@Target({TYPE, METHOD, FIELD})
@BindingType
public @interface CurrentUser {
}
