Display a message when Session Expiration forces the flow to restart [SWF-1598]

[spring-operator]

Doug Breaux opened SWF-1598 and commented

I apologize if this is a duplicate, but I didn't find one.

When the HttpSession has expired and the user re-submits a page in the flow, he/she is sent back to the beginning of the flow. All I need to add to this behavior is a message explaining why it occurred. "You were inactive, so you have been restarted..."

We've done various workarounds for this with a Filter or Interceptor, and even dug further into the FlowHandlerAdapter, but none of these solutions is as simple or robust as we'd like.

I have to think that anyone else using SWF would consider this an expected capability, thus my classifying it as a Bug rather than an Improvement. But I don't really care which if it can be addressed.

The simplest solution I envision is a default message key that can be overridden if necessary, that will cause text to be placed in a default variable on flow or flash scope to be used if a page wants to, and to be cleared automatically after this initial view after restart is displayed.

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Affects: 2.3.0

Reference URL: http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?108833-Handling-expired-session-gracefully

1 votes, 3 watchers

[spring-operator]

Doug Breaux commented

Stack Overflow question as well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9909774/gracefully-handle-expired-httpsession-in-spring-webflow

But also revisiting just to see if anything can be done here.

[spring-operator]

Rossen Stoyanchev commented

Custom FlowHandler is the extension point for an expired session. You can redirect to the flow and append a query param, something like restarted=true, and then in the flow declare an <input name="restarted" type="boolean" value="flashScope.restarted" />.

[spring-operator]

Rossen Stoyanchev commented

Resolving but feel free to comment.

[spring-operator]

Doug Breaux commented

Thanks, Sounds promising and straightforward, I'll have to give it a shot.

You interested in adding that as an Answer on SO? If not, I'll probably copy it there myself. For others to find.

[spring-operator]

Rossen Stoyanchev commented

Sure once you give it a shot, let me know how it goes and I'll do that.

[spring-operator]

Doug Breaux commented

Hah! I was intending to add the answer there, and later get around to trying it out. And was just thinking it would be better the answer coming from you than from me copying & pasting :-) Then I can upvote and/or accept over there, based on my experience. But whatever you prefer. I just might not get to it right away, and this location here is less likely to remind me, as I visit SO more regularly.

[spring-operator]

Doug Breaux commented

Hmmm... although, if implemented in FlowHandler, have to separately apply that handler to each flow, correct? And can only have one FlowHandler bean per flow, so can't have multiple such behaviors without combining them into a single class?

(e.g. we have another custom FlowHandler already to redirect the user to the last valid Snapshot when an expired Snapshot is requested.)