8 Replies Latest reply on Jul 13, 2013 9:53 PM by tony.herstell1

    Conversation timeout in redirect

    maxmil

      I'm not really sure if this is a weld or JSF problem so forgive me if i'm posting in the wrong place.

       

      I have a long running conversation.

       

      I wait in a given page for this conversation to timeout and then click on a commandLink that executes an action in one of my managed beans and then redirects to another page.

       

      The commandLink action executes just fine but when the redirect occurs Weld tries to restore the conversation, presumably finds that it has timed out, and throws a NonExistentConversationException.

       

      Is this the expected behaviour?

       

      If the conversation has timed out i really don't want my action to execute. How can i cause the exception to be thrown before my action executes?

        • 1. Re: Conversation timeout in redirect
          luksa

          Is the action in a @ConversationScoped bean or not?

          • 2. Re: Conversation timeout in redirect
            maxmil

            Yes, i should have mentioned that. Its @Stateful and @ConversationScoped.

             

            In the action i can inject the conversation object and read and play with its properties.

            • 3. Re: Conversation timeout in redirect
              maxmil

              Having downloaded sources and doing a bit of debugging it looks to me like the expiring of conversations only takes place after the JSF Lifecycle has completed which would explain this behaviour.

               

              I am on AS7 which uses Mojarra 2.1.7 and Weld 1.1.5.AS71.Final

               

              I find it hard to beleive that this is the desired behaviour. There must be a call to expire conversations before the JSF lifecyle kicks in must'nt there?

              • 4. Re: Conversation timeout in redirect
                luksa

                Max, this is a bug in Weld.

                 

                Weld destroys expired conversations at the end of a request. Say we have the following scenario:

                 

                1. perform request that starts a conversation and sets conversation timeout to 1ms

                2. wait for more than 1ms

                3. perform request in that same conversation

                 

                During #3 the conversation is still active and will only be destroyed after the request is finished. So if #3 issues a redirect, the NonExistentConversationException will occur immediately after the redirect.

                 

                If you were to issue another request (let's call it #2b) between #2 and #3, but not in the same conversation, your initial conversation would be destroyed at the end of #2b and you wouldn't have this problem.

                 

                The fact that Weld allows the application to use the conversation in a request and then immediately destroys it, violates a part of section 6.7.4 of the CDI spec which states:

                The conversation timeout, which may be specified by calling Conversation.setTimeout() is a hint to the container that

                a conversation should not be destroyed if it has been active within the last given interval in milliseconds.

                Since Weld has just allowed you to use the conversation, the conversation should be considered active and the timeout counter should have been reset.

                1 of 1 people found this helpful
                • 5. Re: Conversation timeout in redirect
                  maxmil

                  Ok. Should I create a bug in Jira then?

                   

                  I think that i can have a go at resolving it... if i manage it i'll make a pull request on github. It looks like the code that activates conversations in the 2.0 branch is the same.

                   

                  I think that there are two issues to address

                   

                  1) When conversations are activated an expires check should be implemented.

                  2) When conversations are activated they should be "touched" to update their last access date.

                   

                  Does this sound accurate?

                  • 6. Re: Conversation timeout in redirect
                    luksa

                    I've already created the issue in jira. See https://issues.jboss.org/browse/WELD-1452

                     

                    Go ahead and try to fix it.

                     

                    Since the conversation is already touched at the end of a request, all you need to do is make sure the expiration check is performed at the start of the request. It should probably check only the current conversation. Currently, all the conversations in the same session are destroyed at the end of a request. In order to keep the changes to a minimum, I'd only add the expiration check for the current conversation to the beginning of the request and leave the expiration check for other (non-current) conversations at the end for now.

                    • 7. Re: Conversation timeout in redirect
                      maxmil

                      Pull request submitted https://github.com/weld/core/pull/331 and issue updated.

                      • 8. Re: Conversation timeout in redirect
                        tony.herstell1

                        >>all you need to do is make sure the expiration check is performed at the start of the request

                         

                        This fix will certainly help with "page locking" I get when a conversation has timed out and the user presses any, of numerous, buttons.

                         

                        Max++