Declaring Listeners (Wiki forum at Coderanch) (original) (raw)

Many ranchers seem confused about which listeners to declare in web.xml.

The main point is :
Classes implementing interfaces other than HttpSessionBindingListener and HttpSessionActivationListener need to be declared in DD.

A trick to remember which listeners to register in the deployment descriptor: Listeners can be classified in 2 categories:

• Those that are interested in all events of one type (e.g. HttpSessionListener - interested in ALL HTTP session creation and destruction events, HttpSessionAttributeListener - interested in all session attribute events - any attribute added / removed / replaced), and all the listeners for ServletContext and ServletRequest. The container creates one instance of each of these listeners.
• Those that are interested only in specific events of one type. There are 2 listeners of this type :
• HttpSessionBindingListener : interested in knowing when it is itself bound / unbound to a HttpSession
• HttpSessionActivationListener : interested in knowing when only the session it is bound to is activated or passivated, so that it can prepare itself for activation / passivation)

We create the instances of these listeners and set them as attributes in specific http sessions.

The first type of listeners are configured in the deployment descriptor - as their methods are ALWAYS called when the event occurs.

The second type of listeners are not configured in the deployment descriptor.

Note: The HFSJ book is in error on this matter, as the errata has confirmed.

ServletsFaq