I have strange issue with logging in and out. I’ve implemented container-based security. I

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Asked: May 16, 20262026-05-16T18:49:35+00:00 2026-05-16T18:49:35+00:00

I have strange issue with logging in and out. I’ve implemented container-based security. I

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I have strange issue with logging in and out. I’ve implemented container-based security. I have Login/Logout links on all my pages (through template.xhtml) that are rendered or not based on backing bean boolean property (it’s actually method isLoggedIn()). Also in backing bean I have method logout which is the action for Logout link (it’s h:commandLink). Logout method returns String that redirects to login page through implicit JSF 2.0 navigation. Now when I deploy application I browse to my page it displays index.xhtml. From there I go to login page. I put my username/password click Login and it logs me in. But now I click Logout which calls backing bean logout method mentioned, which called does this:

public String logout() {
    HttpSession session = (HttpSession) FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getSession(false);
   //HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequest();
   try {
       session.invalidate();
       //request.logout();
   } catch (Exception ex) {
       Logger.getLogger(PostController.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
   }
   return "/ssl/login?faces-redirect=true";
}

Now after clicking Logout it redirects me back to login page when I again put username/password and click Login. But then strange thing happens because it displays me my index.xhtml but I’m not logged in. I have to go again to login page, retype credentials once again to finally be logged in. This happens only when I use session.invalidate() in backing bean logout() method. When I use request.logout() everything works fine. What’s the problem?

Edited:
isLoggedIn looks like this but I don’t think it’s a problem cause I created filter that redirects me (only when I’m logged in) to index.xhtml when I try to browse to login page. And it doesn’t happen.

public boolean isLoggedIn() {
    HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequest();
    if(request.getUserPrincipal() != null)
        return true;
    else
        return false;
}

Edited:
Here is scenario considering http headers:
I request login.xhtml:

GET /blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml;jsessionid=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://localhost:8080/blog-war/
Cookie: JSESSIONID=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b

Response:

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Location: https://localhost:8181/blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Language: en-GB
Content-Length: 197
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:27:47 GMT

Moved temporarily so browser makes another request:

GET /blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8181
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://localhost:8080/blog-war/
Cookie: JSESSIONID=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b

Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0, JSF/2.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 1256
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:27:47 GMT

I fill in username/password and click Login:

POST /blog-war/ssl/j_security_check HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8181
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://localhost:8181/blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml
Cookie: JSESSIONID=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b

Response:

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Location: https://localhost:8181/blog-war/
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Language: en-GB
Content-Length: 182
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:40:01 GMT

It was redirect to index.xhtml:

GET /blog-war/ HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8181
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://localhost:8181/blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml
Cookie: JSESSIONID=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b

Response:

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Pragma: No-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 CET
Location: http://localhost:8080/blog-war/
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Language: en-GB
Content-Length: 181
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:40:01 GMT

Again redirect because I have filter that switch to https-http and vice versa (I wanted only login.xhtml in https):

GET /blog-war/ HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: JSESSIONID=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b

Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0, JSF/2.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 4002
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:40:02 GMT

Now I’m logged in sucessfully, Logout link is rendered means backing bean isLoggedIn returns true. Now I click Logout which invokes session.invalidate() in logout() method in backing bean:

POST /blog-war/index.xhtml HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://localhost:8080/blog-war/
Cookie: JSESSIONID=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b

Response:

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0, JSF/2.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Location: http://localhost:8080/blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Language: en-GB
Content-Length: 196
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:48:34 GMT

Redirect to login page logout returns String “/ssl/login?faces-redirect=true” so we go there:

GET /blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://localhost:8080/blog-war/
Cookie: JSESSIONID=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b

Response:

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Location: https://localhost:8181/blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Language: en-GB
Content-Length: 197
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:48:34 GMT

Another redirect, login page should be in https (filter is working :)):

GET /blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8181
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://localhost:8080/blog-war/
Cookie: JSESSIONID=edccb9f9a1c5fc77dbd7fc86f55b

Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0, JSF/2.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=eefdcda45337b9c897de2a0e95e3; Path=/blog-war; Secure
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 1256
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:48:35 GMT

So this was normal flow of events. Now abnormal:)
I’m already at login page so I retype username/password and click Login:

POST /blog-war/ssl/j_security_check HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8181
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://localhost:8181/blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml
Cookie: JSESSIONID=eefdcda45337b9c897de2a0e95e3

Response:

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Location: https://localhost:8181/blog-war/
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Language: en-GB
Content-Length: 182
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:55:46 GMT

Redirect to index:

GET /blog-war/ HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8181
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: https://localhost:8181/blog-war/ssl/login.xhtml
Cookie: JSESSIONID=eefdcda45337b9c897de2a0e95e3

Response:

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Pragma: No-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 CET
Location: http://localhost:8080/blog-war/
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Language: en-GB
Content-Length: 181
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:55:47 GMT

Again filter redirects to http for index.xhtml:

GET /blog-war/ HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: pl,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-2,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive

Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0, JSF/2.0
Server: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.0.1
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=ef675cbb9747063c235fdb44137e; Path=/blog-war
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 3410
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:55:48 GMT

At this point Logout link is not rendered, means we are not logged in? In response there is set-cookie so does it mean server logged me out? After going again to login page it starts all over from the top. I can also insert server logs which differs a little bit from normal login and abnormal login scenario. Also about Expires in response, why it’s January 1970? I’m really confused.

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1 Answer

Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-05-16T18:49:36+00:00

Since you shouldn’t be able to access restriced pages without being logged in when using container managed security, I strongly suspect that the isLoggedIn() method incorrectly returned false which made it look like that you’re not logged in. The method should at least look like this:

public boolean isLoggedIn() {
    return FacesContext.getCurrentInstance()
        .getExternalContext().getUserPrincipal() != null;
}

Update: right, when a cookie is been created in HTTPS context (i.e. has the Secure flag), then the cookie get lost when switching from HTTPS to HTTP. However if the cookie is been created in HTTP context (i.e. has no Secure flag), then the cookie will remain available in both HTTP and HTTPS contexts. This is as per the RFC 2965 cookie spec (check the description for the Secure flag).

Apart from using HttpServletRequest#logout(), another solution would be to create the cookie immediately during the redirect after logout instead of creating it only when the login page is been requested over HTTPS. You can implicitly create a new cookie by just requesting the HttpSession

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