Maintaining session in android ( application stay authenticated on the server side)

Question

I am building a login application in android in which i am hitting a url(with username and password) upto that part it works fine but after that whenever I am hitting a url(

Answer 1

Here is an another implementation using Volley library ... a very useful hint from https://stackoverflow.com/a/36496607/3099185

    CustomRequest jsonObjReq = new CustomRequest(Request.Method.GET,
            url, null,  new Response.Listener<JSONObject>() {

        @Override
        public void onResponse(JSONObject response) {
                Log.d(TAG, response.toString());
        }
    }, new Response.ErrorListener(){

        @Override
        public void onErrorResponse(VolleyError error) {
            VolleyLog.d(TAG, "Error: " + error.getMessage());
            Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(),
                    error.getMessage(), Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
            // hide the progress dialog
        }
    });

Custom request class

import android.util.Log;

import com.android.volley.AuthFailureError;
import com.android.volley.Response;
import com.android.volley.toolbox.JsonObjectRequest;

import org.json.JSONObject;

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class CustomRequest extends JsonObjectRequest {
    private String session_id = "";

    public CustomRequest(int method, String url, JSONObject jsonRequest,
                                   Response.Listener listener, Response.ErrorListener errorListener) {
        super(method, url, jsonRequest, listener, errorListener);
    }

    public CustomRequest(int method, String url, JSONObject jsonRequest, String session_id,
                                   Response.Listener listener, Response.ErrorListener errorListener) {
        super(method, url, jsonRequest, listener, errorListener);
        this.session_id = session_id;
    }


    @Override
    public Map getHeaders() throws AuthFailureError {
        Map headers = new HashMap();
        Log.d(TAG, " -> session_id = " + session_id);
        if(!(session_id.equals(""))) {
            headers.put("Cookie", this.session_id);
        }
        return headers;
    }

}

Simple way of implementing volley using singleton pattern http://arnab.ch/blog/2013/08/asynchronous-http-requests-in-android-using-volley/

Remember to initialize mRequestQueue in onCreate() to avoid unexpected null pointer exception

@Override
public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();

    // initialize the singleton
    sInstance = this;
        mRequestQueue = Volley.newRequestQueue(this);
}

Hope this help too ... ! :)

Answer 2

I wrote a post about it a while back on coderwall It uses the HttpRequestInterceptor and HttpResponseInterceptor classes which are perfect for that kind of scenario.

Here is an example:

public class HTTPClients {

private static DefaultHttpClient _defaultClient;
private static String session_id;
private static HTTPClients _me;
private HTTPClients() {

}
public static DefaultHttpClient getDefaultHttpClient(){
    if ( _defaultClient == null ) {
        _defaultClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
        _me = new HTTPClients();
        _defaultClient.addResponseInterceptor(_me.new SessionKeeper());
        _defaultClient.addRequestInterceptor(_me.new SessionAdder());
    }
    return _defaultClient;
}

private class SessionAdder implements HttpRequestInterceptor {

    @Override
    public void process(HttpRequest request, HttpContext context)
            throws HttpException, IOException {
        if ( session_id != null ) {
            request.setHeader("Cookie", session_id);
        }
    }

}

private class SessionKeeper implements HttpResponseInterceptor {

    @Override
    public void process(HttpResponse response, HttpContext context)
            throws HttpException, IOException {
        Header[] headers = response.getHeaders("Set-Cookie");
        if ( headers != null && headers.length == 1 ){
            session_id = headers[0].getValue();
        }
    }

}

}

Answer 3

The best idea is to put all the function that your server do in on unique class which is going to be call by the tasks which want to connect. I call this class WebServiceManager. This class have exactly the same method than the server.

As you want an unique session do :

private static WebServiceManager wsm = null;

public static WebServiceManager getInstance() {
    if (wsm == null) {
        wsm = new WebServiceManager();
    }
    return wsm;
}

private final HttpClient httpClient;

private WebServiceManager() {
    httpClient=new DefaultHttpClient();
}

and then you call the method of your instance of webServiceManager to use always the same session. :)

Answer 4

Finally I solved the issue of session handling in Android. Android cant handle the session itself(which a simple browser can) so we have to handle it explicitly. I changed the code for http connection a bit. Created an instance of DefaultHttpClient in the first Activity when connection established.

public static DefaultHttpClient httpClient;

For the first time connection,I did the following:

URL url=new URL(urlToHit);
LoginScreen.httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(); //LoginScreen is the name of the current Activity

HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url.toString());
HttpResponse response = LoginScreen.httpClient.execute(httppost); 

xr.parse(new InputSource(url.openStream())); //SAX parsing

Now for all further connections I used the same httpClient For example in the next activity:

URL url=new URL(urlToHit);

HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url.toString());
HttpResponse response = LoginScreen.httpClient.execute(httppost); 

// Log.v("response code",""+response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode());

// Get hold of the response entity
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();

InputStream instream = null;

if (entity != null) {
    instream = entity.getContent();
}
xr.parse(new InputSource(instream)); //SAX parsing

Hope this will help you all too to solve session issue in Android.

Answer 5

My problem was that i login first and saved the returned session in userpreferences. After that the POST call to set a record said

"Error ,Cannot authenticate the User"

So i added post.setHeader("oAuth-Token", UserPreferences.ACCESS_TOKEN); the whole thing looks like this.

HttpPost post=new HttpPost(URL );  
post.setHeader("oAuth-Token", UserPreferences.ACCESS_TOKEN);    

. . and It solved the problem.