0

I'm building several Portlets to deploy on a WebSphere Portal Server, and each Portlet is deployed in it's own WAR. Now, I'm needing to track every Portlet a user visits while it's logged on the Portal. I was trying to get the Session Identifier from a Portlet using this:

HttpServletRequest servletRequest = PortletUtils.getHttpServletRequest(request);
String sessionId = servletRequest.getSession().getId();

But after I logged in, I'm getting different sessionId values from every Portlet/WAR I visited. I guess that makes sense since there's one Session Scope per WAR.

So, how do I get an identifier for the Portal Session (not the Portlet one)? I'm seeing that JSESSIONID cookie is the same in every HTTP Request, but I'm not sure if that's exposed through Servlet or Portlet API.

Carlos Gavidia-Calderon
  • 7,145
  • 9
  • 34
  • 59
  • try to cast portlet request to servlet request and look on session id. To do this use com.ibm.wps.pe.pc.std.core.PortletUtils class from I think wp.pe.rt.api.jar try to find this jar at PortalServer\app or PortalServer\base directories – Georgy Gobozov Mar 16 '13 at 20:13

1 Answers1

1

Users that are not logged into the portal don't have a session like that. You can have Portal keep track of session information for anonymous users by enabling public sessions.

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/portalwiki.nsf/xpDocViewer.xsp?lookupName=IBM+WebSphere+Portal+7+Product+Documentation#action=openDocument&res_title=Portal_configuration_services_wp7&content=pdcontent

Look under navigator service for the property to change.

Also, I think this might be more easily accomplished in the theme or a portlet filter. You should still be able to get access to the Portal session in either of these places but you won't need to include code in every portlet.

Here's a link for creating a global portlet filter.

http://wpcertification.blogspot.com/2010/11/applying-global-filter-to-all-portlets.html

UPDATE: Like any big framework there are lots of options. I'll offer a brain dump of what I can think of / find. You may have to experiment and see which method you prefer.

The JSESSIONID cookie should be same for a user throughout the whole session. If the session expires they'll get a new JSESSIONID cookie. Using this you'll be able to track a user through a single session but possibly not across multiple sessions.

You could consider using getUserPrinipal() or getRemoteUser() off of the PortletRequest object. I haven't used those method in a while so you'll have to see what info comes out of them.

There is also request.getAttribute(PortletRequest.USER_INFO). You'll have to do some config in the portlet.xml to make certain attributes available in the Map that returns. There is an example here. We're using ibm-primaryEmail instead of the first and last name like the example on my current project.

Lastly you could look into using the PUMA API thats built into Portal. It'll will be a bit heavier on the coding and is obviously more container specific but should be able to do just about any job you need related to users.

Nick Roth
  • 3,057
  • 2
  • 15
  • 15
  • I want to track Portlets visited by Logged users. Session Id doesn't seem to work in that scenario either (each WAR manages it's own value) – Carlos Gavidia-Calderon Mar 09 '13 at 15:15
  • I've updated my answer with some more ideas to try. You shouldn't need to enable public sessions though. And you really shouldn't if you don't need it since It adds some performance overhead that won't do anything for you here. – Nick Roth Mar 09 '13 at 16:24