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Posted to dev@tomcat.apache.org by Benjamin, , benja.be, , be...@benja.be on 2002/05/20 17:34:43 UTC

Implementation of the sessions

Hello guys,
I’m currently writing a thesis about JSP/Java, etc… in an e-Learning
application.
 
I need to know how the sessions (HttpSession) are managed in Tomcat.
I read it can be URL rewriting or cookies (on the java.sun web site),
but I block the cookies and there are no cookies on my disk.
So I suppose it’s URL rewriting, but I don’t see some variables
transmitted… like page.jsp?SESSION_INFO=…
Or maybe they are “invisible”. Like in the POST method of a form.

I searched everywhere on the web, tried to understand the source codes
of Tomcat, exchanged messages in the Tomcat mailing-list.
I can’t find the answer….
You are my last chance, please HELP ME.

It would be extremely nice from you…

Thank you,
Benja.

PS : Sorry for my bad english…
 

Re: Implementation of the sessions

Posted by Rolf Veen <ro...@helide.com>.
Benjamin Fonzé [benja.be] wrote:

> What is that mechanism ?

See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/ssl/
for links to SSL and TLS specs and other related
information.

For sessions thru cookies, see RFC-2965 (at rfc-editor.org,
for example).

Regards.
Rolf.



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RE: Implementation of the sessions

Posted by Benjamin, , benja.be, , be...@benja.be.
Thank you for your help Bojan and Rolf.

I'll try to understand all that :)

Benja.



-----Original Message-----
From: Bojan Smojver [mailto:bojan@rexursive.com] 
Sent: mardi 21 mai 2002 9:46
To: Tomcat Dev List
Subject: RE: Implementation of the sessions

On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 17:32, Benjamin Fonzé [benja.be] wrote:

> What is that mechanism ?

SSL establishes a session before HTTP protocol gets on top of it (i.e.
SSL is a transport layer). Once that happens, the container (Tomcat)
might have access to the SSL Session ID (I know that part to be true if
you use Apache + mod_ssl + mod_jk) and then use it as its own session
ID. To my knowledge, that's not the case with 3.3.x series (wouldn't
have a clue about 4.x). However you can check Tomcat session ID against
the SSL session ID in 3.3.x.

I think I read somewhere (and SSL people please correct me) that SSL
session ID's can be swapped during the session at any time (this is by
design), so the above checking might create problems if that happens. In
practice it usually ends up being fine, but in theory I think it's not
entirely correct thing to do.

Bojan


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RE: Implementation of the sessions

Posted by Bojan Smojver <bo...@rexursive.com>.
On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 17:32, Benjamin Fonzé [benja.be] wrote:

> What is that mechanism ?

SSL establishes a session before HTTP protocol gets on top of it (i.e.
SSL is a transport layer). Once that happens, the container (Tomcat)
might have access to the SSL Session ID (I know that part to be true if
you use Apache + mod_ssl + mod_jk) and then use it as its own session
ID. To my knowledge, that's not the case with 3.3.x series (wouldn't
have a clue about 4.x). However you can check Tomcat session ID against
the SSL session ID in 3.3.x.

I think I read somewhere (and SSL people please correct me) that SSL
session ID's can be swapped during the session at any time (this is by
design), so the above checking might create problems if that happens. In
practice it usually ends up being fine, but in theory I think it's not
entirely correct thing to do.

Bojan


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RE: Implementation of the sessions

Posted by Benjamin, , benja.be, , be...@benja.be.
Thanks a lot for your answer.

I read these documents.
But there are not a lot of details.

I use session with SSL, and all I can obtain is :

-----
"SRV.7.1.2 SSL Sessions
Secure Sockets Layer, the encryption technology used in the HTTPS
protocol, has a
mechanism built into it allowing multiple requests from a client to be
unambiguously identified as being part of a session. A servlet container
can easily
use this data to define a session."
-----

What is that mechanism ?

Benja.



-----Original Message-----
From: Bojan Smojver [mailto:bojan@rexursive.com] 
Sent: mardi 21 mai 2002 2:01
To: Tomcat Dev List
Subject: Re: Implementation of the sessions

On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 01:34, Benjamin Fonzé [benja.be] wrote:

> So I suppose it’s URL rewriting, but I don’t see some variables
> transmitted… like page.jsp?SESSION_INFO=

It's called 'jsessionid' and it gets there by explicit encoding of the
URL. You should check the Java Servlet Specification, which is a public
document available from Sun and Java Servlet API documentation (also
available from Sun), which explains how it's actually used.

Bojan


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Re: Implementation of the sessions

Posted by Bojan Smojver <bo...@rexursive.com>.
On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 01:34, Benjamin Fonzé [benja.be] wrote:

> So I suppose it’s URL rewriting, but I don’t see some variables
> transmitted… like page.jsp?SESSION_INFO=

It's called 'jsessionid' and it gets there by explicit encoding of the
URL. You should check the Java Servlet Specification, which is a public
document available from Sun and Java Servlet API documentation (also
available from Sun), which explains how it's actually used.

Bojan


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