Recording user logins/logouts

[free1000]

I need to record an event in a database table when a user logs on and off of the portal.

I'd ideally like to do this without changing the JBoss portal sources.

I can think of a couple of hackish ways of doing this involving jsps/servlets and redirects but wonder if anyone can think of a clean way of mixing this in to the portal via configuration of any kind that avoids coupling the solution to a specific portal release.

[peterj]

Just a thought. Have you looked into using AOP to accomplish this? Writing an aspect for the appropriate methods should do the trick. (And before you ask, no I have not done this.)

[soshah]

Since Portal uses JAAS based authentication, you could also integrate a custom Tomcat Valve and monitor a user's authenticated session.

Tomcat Valve would hook in from your web app's context.xml

[free1000]

My first thought is that I like the idea of the custom valve for Tomcat. I'll take a look at it.

I was thinking of the AOP approach but I'm not familiar with how that would be hooked in to the portal.

Thanks for the ideas

[free1000]

I've written a simple valve but have a problem

I've deployed the jar file containing the class to

JBOSS\server\default\deploy\jbossweb-tomcat55.sar

and I've added a valve entry in the server.xml

However I'm getting the following error

19:01:12,750 ERROR [Digester] Begin event threw exception
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: No ClassLoaders found for: com.fooco.util.security.valves.UserLoggerValve
at org.jboss.mx.loading.LoadMgr3.beginLoadTask(LoadMgr3.java:306)

It seems logical to deploy the jar file in the tomcat sar directory... can't think of where else it might need to be. Could it be a question of compiler compatability? I am compiling under JDK 5.0.

[soshah]

Hmmm...that beats me. The class should be found if its properly installed inside a jar in the tomcat sar file.


As an alternative, you dont have to integrate the Valve inside of core tomcat. You can integrate a Valve within the context of just your web application.

See this for details on how this can be setup:

http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=ExtendedFormAuthenticator


But still, the ClassNotFound is a mystery if the jar is copied into the tomcat sar file. This should work and has worked several times in the past for me