Spring bean scopes: session and globalSession

Question

What is the difference between session and globalSession in Spring framework?

<bean id="exampleBean" class="com.test.baen.ExampleBean" scope="session"/> <bean id="exampleBean" class="com.test.baen.ExampleBean" scope="globalSession"/> 

As per my study, both are valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

Now, session bean scope will remain until the user session, but will globalSession bean scope be available throughout the whole application?

Is it the application scope?

I am unable to understand the term "global HTTP Session"; will it be available throughout the global HTTP Session?

Answer 1

globalSession is something that is connected to Portlet applications. When your application works in a Portlet container it is built of some amount of portlets. Each portlet has its own session, but if you want to store variables global for all portlets in your application then you should store them in globalSession. This scope doesn't have any special effect different from the session scope in Servlet based applications.

Answer 2

As per Spring documentation ::

session - Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of an HTTP Session. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.

global session - Scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a global HTTP Session. Typically only valid when used in a portlet context. Only valid in the context of a web-aware Spring ApplicationContext.