Handling an expired ViewState in JSF and Richfaces

Question

I have a series signup pages that build on each other. When the users session expires I have a Listener that cleans everything up on the server and that works great. But, if the user attempts to do anything else I just want to redirect them back to the first page of the series. However, my filter doesn't seem to work correctly. I keep getting javax.faces.application.ViewExpiredException

What is the best practice for handling this expcetion? I can't really just handle in web.xml because that's too global. Plus the Error page is being rendered from some JSF code - it seems like I need to catch that this is happening using a PhaseListener so the exception doesn't happen in the first place, but I haven't been able to find a good model for how to do this. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Richfaces has their own mechanism for handling ViewExpiredException, look at Richfaces docs.

Answer 2

I think you are the correct track with a phase listener. Essentially set something up in session on the first page. Then in phase listener look for the value in session. If it doesn't exit then do a redirect. The trick is to do it early in the phase listener process. Not sure exactly where in the process your phase listener is throwing the exception.

Answer 3

The way I handle this is to add a filter to the web.xml only mapped to the urls you want to track. That filter checks if the session is expired, and then forwards to a login page if it is. It should work if the filter is run before any JSF code is run.