Spring Security Example Tutorial - How to limit number of User Session in Java J2EE

Spring security can limit number of session a user can have. If you are developing web application specially secure web application in Java J2EE then you must have come up with requirement similar to online banking portals have e.g. only one session per user at a time or no concurrent session per user. You can also implement this functionality without using spring security but with Spring security its just piece of cake with coffee :). Spring Security provides lots of Out of Box functionality a secure enterprise or web application needed like authentication, authorization, session management, password encoding, secure access, session timeout etc. In our spring security example we have seen how to do LDAP Authentication in Active directory using spring security and in this spring security example we will see how to limit number of session user can have in Java web application or restricting concurrent user session.

 

Spring Security Example: Limit Number of User Session

As I said it’s simple and easy when you use spring security framework or library. In fact is all declarative and no code is require to enable concurrent session disable functionality. You will need to include following xml snippet in your Spring Security Configuration file mostly named as applicaContext-security.xml. Here is sample spring security Example of limiting user session in Java web application:

<session-management invalid-session-url="/logout.html">
    <concurrency-control max-sessions="1" error-if-maximum-exceeded="true" />
</session-management>

As you see you can specify how many concurrent session per user is allowed, most secure system like online banking portals allow just one authenticate session per user. You can even specify a URL where user will be taken if they submit an invalid session identifier can be used to detect session timeout. Session-management element is used to capture session related stuff. Max-session specify how many concurrent authenticated session is allowed and if error-if-maximum-exceeded set to true it will flag error if user tries to login into another session.

Dependency

This code has dependency on spring-security framework. You need to download spring security jar like spring-security-web-3.1.0.jar and add into application classpath.

This simple example of spring security shows power of spring security, a small piece of xml snippet can add very useful and handy security feature in your Java web application. I recommend using spring security for your new or existing Java web application created using Servlet JSP.

That’s all on how to limit number of user session using spring security in Java web application. Let me know if you face any issue while implementing this security feature in your project.

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