Can't understand `@Autowired HttpServletReques

Question

In our spring application, we use HttpServletRequest in two ways:

(the code here are simplied, and seems meaningless)

1. In the controller:

   @RequestMapping(value = "/hello", method = RequestMethod.GET)
   @ResponseBody
   public ResponseEntity<String> hello(HttpServletRequest request) {
       System.out.println("## controller req.hashcode: " + request.hashCode());
       System.out.println("## header 'abc': " + request.getHeader("abc"));
       return new ResponseEntity<String>("OK", HttpStatus.OK);
   }
   

2. In a normal component:

   @Component
   class RequestService {
       private final HttpServletRequest request;
       @Autowired
       public RequestService(HttpServletRequest request) {
           this.request = request;
       }
       public String getHeaderAbc() {
           System.out.println("## service req.hashcode: " + request.hashCode());
           return this.request.getHeader("abc");
       }
   }
   

At first, I was thinking the 2nd way is totally wrong, because it should only inject the request instance once. So no matter when I invoke getHeaderAbc() method, it should return the same value(of the first request).

But when I try it, I found several interesting things:

1. The request.hashCode() in controller is always different (as I expected)
2. The request.hashCode() in RequestService is always the same (as I thought)
3. But the header value is different if I issue a request with a different header abc !!!

It seems for the singleton RequestService, spring keeps the request instance, but changed the headers it contains!

How to understand it?

Answer 1

Take a look at the scoped proxy. http://www.java-allandsundry.com/2012/08/spring-scoped-proxy.html Basically you inject a proxy that keeps a references to the current HttpRequest beans and gives you the right one, selecting it by the request id.

IMHO using HttpRequest outside of the web layer is not a good practice. I would use it only in the controlellrs.