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Re: should HttpSession.getAttribute(String) expire a session?

From: Shing Wai Chan <shing.wai.chan_at_oracle.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:01:51 -0700

If the session is expired, then we should expect it would be cleanup and
hence the invocation of HttpSessionListener#sessionDestroyed at any time.

On 8/10/12 2:38 PM, Bobby Bissett wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 5:23 PM, Shing Wai Chan
> <shing.wai.chan_at_oracle.com> wrote:
>> In general, the expired session is cleaned up by a background thread.
>> But if it is used before cleaning up, then it will be cleaned up while
>> accessing.
>> From description below, it is the latter case here.
> Thanks, that makes perfect sense. But in terms of what the calling
> code sees, should this happen? According to
> http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/6/api/javax/servlet/http/HttpSession.html#getAttribute(java.lang.String)
> I would expect it to throw an IllegalStateException. There's nothing
> in the JavaDoc to indicate that calling this method could result in a
> SessionListener being called. As you can understand, that leads to an
> unexpected (and hard to test) edge case for handling concurrent access
> to a session object.
>
> Thanks,
> Bobby