Accessing RequestContextHolder and HttpServletRequest.getUserPrincipal() from AuthenticationSuccessHandler

Question

I have a Spring-MVC application (i.e. I am using the Spring's dispatcher servlet). I am also using Spring Security to authenticate users. Since I use the Spring's dispatcher servlet, I do NOT have to declare

  <listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextListener</listener-class>
  </listener>

in my web.xml in order to be able to use RequestContextHolder (if I understand correctly the documentation).

My question refers to my implementation of the interface org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AuthenticationSuccessHandler:

public class AuthenticationSuccessHandlerImpl implements AuthenticationSuccessHandler {

    @Override
    public void onAuthenticationSuccess(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, Authentication authentication) throws ServletException, IOException {

        int timeout = 60*60;

        //does work
        request.getSession().setMaxInactiveInterval(timeout); //60 minutes
        System.out.println("Session timeout of user: " + authentication.getName() + " has been set to: " + timeout + " seconds.");

        /*
        //does not work
        session().setMaxInactiveInterval(timeout); //60 minutes
        System.out.println("Session timeout of user: " + request.getUserPrincipal().getName() + " has been set to: " + timeout + " seconds.");
        */

        //now restore the default work flow (SavedRequestAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler is the default AuthenticationSuccessHandler that Spring uses,
        // see: http://static.springsource.org/spring-security/site/docs/3.0.x/reference/core-web-filters.html#form-login-flow-handling )
        (new SavedRequestAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler()).onAuthenticationSuccess(request, response, authentication);
    }

    public static HttpSession session() {
        ServletRequestAttributes attr = (ServletRequestAttributes) RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes();
        return attr.getRequest().getSession(true); // true == allow create
    }
}

Could you explain why in the above mentioned code, RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes() and HttpServletRequest.getUserPrincipal() do not work (they do work inside a Controller)?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Spring security is filter-based. That is why you need the RequestContextListener defined since the DispatcherServlet will not have been invoked yet when the spring-security stuff happens and the spring request context will not have been set up.