Accessing a session scoped variable anywhere outside the session scoped context

[Rama Krishna]

I am stuck with this very interesting requirement and need your inputs!

In our web application, the goal is to pass a user's company to a static method getSession() of a ConnectDatabase class that returns a hibernate session. One common area, the HttpSession is where we store the user's companyName as it is user specific but am unable to find a way to access it outside of it when needed.

Our entire application was originally built for handling just a single database and all works fine until we decided that we will begin handling multiple databases from the same application by passing the property, user's company name, based on which we would return the user's database specific sessionFactory session.

This implementation too was quite simple in the static method

public static getSession() 

changed to

public static getSession(String companyName) 

where we would create a hashMap<String, SessionFactory> where the key string is the company name.

Now comes the problem of changing the entire application where there are references to this method usually accessed as
ConnectDatabase.getSession()
to be changed to
ConnectDatabase.getSession(companyName) and what I was trying to achieve is a way to store this companyName in a dummy class initialized in a block of a final variable using a run time declaration as follows.

public final class CompanyName
{
  public final companyName INSTANCE = new companyName();
  
  private final companyName;
  {
   -- someMethod that runTime assigns and initializes this companyName 
field within a synchronous block so that every user has his own 
companyName as a final field set once and only once --
  }
}

If I were able to achieve this I would be able to access the companyName of the user from any instance of this class CompanyName, however, the method that assigns the companyName it's value changes too every time this method a new instance of this class is created.

And, I cannot create a singleton class public static final companyName INSTANCE = new companyName(); as it would then refer to the latest added companyName instance

However, coming up with that method that initializes this final variable this way failed, and I don't see any way to achieve something similar to the following:

public final class CompanyName
{
  public final companyName INSTANCE = new companyName();
  
  private final companyName = USER_SPECIFIC_COMPANY_ASSIGNED_RUNTIME;
}

Or is there any other way to achieve this, please don't suggest me to change all of the 1000 methods to send the companyName to get the right sessionFactory as sometimes there is no access to get the companyName at all as there is no request, session variables available in utility classes needing access to the session factory and that have nothing to do with the presentation layer where you usually have access to request, session?

Cheers
Krishna

[Rama Krishna]

I guess there is no solution really but passing this value, user specific from the presentation layer every each time someone makes a call to the business layer and so I have no choice but change all these thousand methods.

[Sebastian Janisch]

Please make your post more attractive by putting the code between the code tags ;)

[Rama Krishna]

After appending the CODE block as per the request above, am I the only one seeing the page appearing extended out of the default browser page width?

Fixed, after I fixed the CODE block comments' formatting!

[ankur rathi]

I didn't completely understand your situation.

Is it like you need session's data in a class where you don't have access of session object?

Why don't you pass session object to this class?

[Bear Bibeault]

ankur rathi wrote:Why don't you pass session object to this class?

Because that would be a severe violation of best practices.

It's a poor idea to pass container objects around. Not only does it create strong binding that should not exist, objects like requests, responses and sessions can go out of scope and creating references to them can be a recipe for trouble.

[ankur rathi]

Bear Bibeault wrote:

ankur rathi wrote:Why don't you pass session object to this class?

Because that would be a severe violation of best practices.

It's a poor idea to pass container objects around. Not only does it create strong binding that should not exist, objects like requests, responses and sessions can go out of scope and creating references to them can be a recipe for trouble.

Doesn't controller pass these objects to action classes, in frameworks?

[Bear Bibeault]

Yes, and that's as far as they should go. Passing them to the lower layers of the application not only strongly binds those classes to the servlet environment, it creates a violation of the principle of Separation of Concerns.

It's a much better practice to only pass the data, not the container instances.

[William Brogden]

If you think you need to pass a session around, it is time to rethink your structure.

Instead create a custom class to hold your user data and keep a reference to that in your session.

Make that class Serializable and you can persist it to disk or a db. Let the container do its job according to the API.

Bill

[Rama Krishna]

After putting some thought into this, the only way to get this done is to either pass a reference of session itself, which is not a good idea as you have to be able to access it again by composition by creating and passing instances of it every time, this would cause performance issues and this does not follow the standard conventions of separating concerns,
OR
an instance of a new class (one that has some of the common properties for the current user) that is instantiated run time in every action/servlet class (presentation layer) in its init() method used and set/accessed via composition both at the presentation layer and passed on to business layer via construction setter, to force all the business classes to have access to this object when their methods are used, unlike the static methods and utility methods that don't have or cannot deal with request, session directly have to be dealt separately! At the presentation layer, I would add this class object via composition in the super class as follows and to pass it on to the Business Tier, I would add it to another super class extended by all Business classes that HAS to be instantiated via a constructor whose argument is this class object.

// User class containing user specific details
Class User
{
public String companyName;

// getter and setter
}

Presentation layer access:

ParentClass that is extended by all servlet classes would maintain User class as a property via composition and is set in the init() method.

The Question is, how do we get this ActionServlet that calls this ParentAction class, set this one parent property run time in the STRUTS framework or rather how do I get this property set via composition when ever an Action is invoked!!

Business layer access:
SomeDAOInterface someDAO = new SomeDAOImpl(MY_PRESENTATION_CLASS_OBJ_REF);
someDAO.callSomeBusinessMethod();

I do have to create individual constructors to pass on this class object overriding the default ones in all of the business classes though! I guess this atleast reduces the changes I have to make.

Cheers
Krishna