Communication between AngularJS and a Jersey Webservice which are on a different domain. Can't access correct session

Wouter picture Wouter · Dec 6, 2012 · Viewed 15k times · Source

Lately I've been playing around with AngularJS and Java EE 6. I've build an webservice with Jersey and deployed the project on Glassfish. Because I needed some kind of authentication and an OAuth implementation or an JDBCRealm seemed overkill I decided to just create a session if the user successfully logged in.

@POST
@Path("/login")
@Produces({MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON})
@Consumes({MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON})
public Response login(LoginDAO loginData, @Context HttpServletRequest req) {
    req.getSession().invalidate();
    loginData.setPassword(PasswordGenerator.hash(loginData.getPassword()));
    User foundUser = database.login(loginData);
    if(foundUser == null) {
        return Response.status(Status.CONFLICT).build();
    }
    req.getSession(true).setAttribute("username", foundUser.getUsername());
    return Response.ok().build();
}

@GET
@Path("/ping")
public Response ping(@Context HttpServletRequest req) {
    if(req.getSession().getAttribute("username") == null) {
        return Response.ok("no session with an username attribute has been set").build();
    }
    return Response.ok(req.getSession(true).getAttribute("username")).build();
}

This seems to work alright, if I post to /login from Postman or from a basic jQuery webpage deployed on glassfish I do get the correct username back and a session has been placed. If I then send a GET request to /ping I do get the username back from which I logged in.

I've an AngularJS application deployed on a node.js webserver which needed to login. Because this server is on another port its on another domain and I had to go through the pain of enabling cors. I did this by building a container response filter which sets the response headers.

public class CrossOriginResourceSharingFilter implements ContainerResponseFilter {
    @Override
    public ContainerResponse filter(ContainerRequest creq, ContainerResponse cresp) {
        cresp.getHttpHeaders().putSingle("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "http://localhost:8000");
        cresp.getHttpHeaders().putSingle("Access-Control-Allow-Credentials", "true");
        cresp.getHttpHeaders().putSingle("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "GET, POST, DELETE, PUT");
        cresp.getHttpHeaders().putSingle("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Content-Type, Accept, X-Requested-With");
        return cresp;
    }
}

This did made it possible for me to send different types of HTTP requests from AngularJS to Java EE 6 application deployed on glassfish.

The problem is that when I send a POST request from AngularJS to the /login method, a session is created and I do get my username back. But when I send a GET request to the /ping method I get the "no session with an username attribute has been set" notice.

I believe this has to do with cross domain prevention and that I've to set the withCredentials tag when I send a xhr request. I've been trying to do this in AngularJS but haven't found out how to do this.

function LoginCtrl($scope, $http) {
    $scope.login = function() {
        $http.post("glassfish:otherport/api/login", $scope.credentials).
            success(function(data) {
                console.log(data);
            }).
            error(function(data, error) {
                console.log(error);
            });
    };
};

And in another controller:

$scope.getUsername = function() {
    $http.get("glassfish:otherport/api/ping", {}).
        success(function(data) {
            $scope.username = data;
        }).
        error(function() {
            $scope.username = "error";
        })
    }

I've tried to set withCredentials is true

$http.defaults.withCredentials = true;

This however didn't solve my problem. I also tried to send it with every request in the config parameter but this didn't solve my problem either.

Answer

iwein picture iwein · Jan 1, 2013

Depending on the version of AngularJS you are using you might have to set it on each $http.

Since 1.2 you can do:

$http.get(url,{ withCredentials: true, ...})

From 1.1.1 you can globally configure it:

config(['$httpProvider', function($httpProvider) {
  $httpProvider.defaults.withCredentials = true;
}]).

If you're using an older version of Angular, try passing a config object to $http that specifies withCredentials. That should work in versions before 1.1:

$http({withCredentials: true, ...}).get(...)

See also mruelans answer and: