Jakarta Struts Cookbook

11.2. Checking for User Login on Any Struts Reques t

Problem

You want to be able to check if a user is logged in for any request made to an action in your struts-config.xml file, but you don't want to have to subclass a custom base Action class.

Solution

Create a custom request processor, overriding the processPreprocess( ) or the processActionPerform( ) method. The custom request processor shown in Example 11-3 retrieves the user object from the HTTP session. If this object is null, an HTTP error response of 403 (Forbidden) is returned.

Example 11-3. Overriding the processPreprocess( ) method

package org.apache.struts.action;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpSession;

import org.apache.struts.webapp.example.Constants;
import org.apache.struts.webapp.example.User;

public class CustomRequestProcessor1 extends RequestProcessor {

    protected boolean processPreprocess(HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpServletResponse response) {
        HttpSession session = request.getSession( );
        User user = (User) session.getAttribute(Constants.USER_KEY);
        if (user == null) {
            try {
                response.sendError(403, "User not logged in");
            } catch (IOException e) {
                log.error("Unable to send response");
            }
            return false;
        }
        
        return true;
    }
}

If you need to use the Struts objects passed to an Action's execute() method, such as the ActionForm and ActionMapping, override the processActionPerform( ) method as shown in Example ...