SimpleSessionHandler FINAL WORD?

[Greg Day <Gr...@tec.govt.nz>]

Hi,
I had lots of issues with setting up sessions using the SimpleSessionHandler.
Finally, with lots of help from this list, I managed to get it going. I am using Axis1.2 RC3

The big problem seemed to be:
the org.apache.axis.utils.Admin client deploy.wsdd
produced a client-config.wsdd file like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deployment xmlns="http://xml.apache.org/axis/wsdd/" xmlns:java="http://xml.apache.org/axis/wsdd/providers/java">
 <globalConfiguration>
  <parameter (abbreviated).../>
 </globalConfiguration>
 <handler name="session" type="java:org.apache.axis.handlers.SimpleSessionHandler"/>
 <service name="DocumentProcessorMessageInterface" provider="java:MSG" style="message" use="literal">
  <requestFlow>
   <handler type="session"/>
  </requestFlow>
  <responseFlow>
   <handler type="session"/>
  </responseFlow>
  <parameter name="allowedMethods" value="processDocument"/>
  <parameter name="className" value="...DocumentProcessorMessageInterfaceImpl"/>
 </service>
 <transport name="java" pivot="java:org.apache.axis.transport.java.JavaSender"/>
 <transport name="http" pivot="java:org.apache.axis.transport.http.HTTPSender"/>
 <transport name="local" pivot="java:org.apache.axis.transport.local.LocalSender"/>
</deployment>

which looks fine. However, nothing I did seemed to work. The client would not pick up the session id supplied from the server.
so, after lots of frustration, and reading a million posts, I changed the client-config.wsdd to be:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deployment xmlns="http://xml.apache.org/axis/wsdd/" xmlns:java="http://xml.apache.org/axis/wsdd/providers/java">
 <globalConfiguration>
  <parameter name="adminPassword" value="admin"/>
  <parameter name="disablePrettyXML" value="true"/>
  <parameter name="attachments.implementation" value="org.apache.axis.attachments.AttachmentsImpl"/>
  <parameter name="sendXsiTypes" value="true"/>
  <parameter name="sendMultiRefs" value="true"/>
  <parameter name="sendXMLDeclaration" value="true"/>
 </globalConfiguration>
 <handler name="session" type="java:org.apache.axis.handlers.SimpleSessionHandler"/>
 <transport name="java" pivot="java:org.apache.axis.transport.java.JavaSender"/>
 <transport name="http" pivot="java:org.apache.axis.transport.http.HTTPSender">
      <requestFlow>
       <handler type="java:org.apache.axis.handlers.SimpleSessionHandler"/>
    </requestFlow>
    <responseFlow>
       <handler type="java:org.apache.axis.handlers.SimpleSessionHandler"/>
     </responseFlow>
 </transport>
 <transport name="local" pivot="java:org.apache.axis.transport.local.LocalSender"/>
</deployment>

And it worked! The client first sent a message without a session, the server created a session ID and sent it back in the header.
Interestingly, the client sent the session ID in the body, I'm not sure why.
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
   <soapenv:Header>
      <ns1:sessionID soapenv:actor="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/actor/next" soapenv:mustUnderstand="0" href="#id0" xmlns:ns1="http://xml.apache.org/axis/session"/>
   </soapenv:Header>
   <soapenv:Body>
<!-- my message stuff went here -->
         <multiRef id="id0" soapenc:root="0" soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xsi:type="soapenc:long" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">6179074524436491775</multiRef>
      </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

On the client, the session appears to be associated with the Service object. So if you create a new Service object, you will get a new session.

In terms of location for the client-config.wsdd file, the docs and the list correctly state that it needs to be in the classpath for the client class. If running from a java test client, the switch 
-Daxis.ClientConfigFile=c:\java_projects\axiswebservice\src\client-config.wsdd works.

Let me know if anyone needs more help, or a working example.
Cheers
Greg