Disable HTTPSession for stateless web services [du

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• Can I turn off the HttpSession in web.xml? 9 answers

I would like to know if it is possible to disable the HTTPSession for an application server handling only web services RESTful.

I don't know if there are specific application servers or servlet containers designed to handle micro RESTful web services.

I think that disabling completely the session concept will give the following advantages:

• Better performances
• No risk to save data in the session breaking the concept of stateless of a RESTful webservice
• Less classes loaded by the classloader
• No unused information is saved in the session (for example the session id, session state)
• less access to synchronized blocks (I think that at least in the Session the value of lastAccessedTime is updated for every request and this should be done in a synchronized block)

If there is no application server or servlet container that can do that: Is there any other Java engine that can handle micro services without creating something similar to an HttpSession?

Answer 1

You can't completely disable the HttpSession.

But you can ensure a HttpSession won't be created in your application. To do it, ensure the following methods are not being invoked (by yourself or by the frameworks you are using):

• HttpServletRequest.getSession()
• HttpServletRequest.getSession(boolean) with true

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Microservices is an architecture design principle. If you want to use Spring, there's a guide you can follow.

Answer 2

You cannot disable HttpSession on a servlet container, like Tomcat.

Maybe Play framework would be a good approach for implementing your design.