[[HTTPSession-HTTPSession]]
HTTP-Session Handling
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Several Camel components can use HTTP as the underlying transport protocol.
In general HTTP calls are stateless in nature, however some servers allow
to maintain state via cookies. Cookies are often used to maintain a server
session (e.g. via a session cookie called "JSESSIONID" with servers implementing
the JEE Servlet specification).

[[HTTPSession-SessionScope]]
Session Scope
^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If a Camel route intends to implement some kind of HTTP session handling
the scope of this session should be considered.

Independently of the session scope the implementation must honor the domain of
the handled cookies.

[[HTTPSession-ContextScope]]
Route/Context Scope
+++++++++++++++++++

It might be desirable to have a single session for a route or a 
link:camelcontext.html[CamelContext]. This essentially means that all calls to
a server issued from a route or CamelContext share a single HTTP session.

[[HTTPSession-EndpointScope]]
Endpoint Scope
++++++++++++++

It is also possible to have a session on an
link:endpoint.html[Endpoint] entity. This would mean that all invocations of
an HTTP call issued by a single Endpoint share a session, whereas different
Endpoints never share sessions, even if the call is sent to the same server.

Some components like camel-http, and camel-http4 support endpoint scoped sessions
even prior to version 2.19.

[[HTTPSession-ExchangeScope]]
Exchange Scope
++++++++++++++

The third option to define a session scope is on 
link:exchange.html[Exchange] level. This is particularly useful for scenarios
where the server session is really maintaining state.

In this case the route could e.g. first do a login call, then some update calls 
and finally a logout call. If the session handling would be defined on route or 
CamelContext scopes this would seem to run, however under load parallel invocations
of the route would share a *single* session, which could cause issues. If the session
is defined on exchange scope, each invocation of the route will get a separate session
and the server can maintain a separate state for the different parallel invocations.

[[HTTPSession-Usage]]
Usage
^^^^^

If you are a Camel user, you see that several Camel components support the cookieHandler
parameter on endpoint level. All you need to do is to instantiate a cookie handler 
appropriate for your use case and reference it in the cookieHandler parameter for
all endpoints that are supposed to participate in the HTTP session.

There are two pre-implemented cookie handlers:
`org.apache.camel.http.common.cookie.InstanceCookieHandler` and
`org.apache.camel.http.common.cookie.ExchangeCookieHandler`. 

The InstanceCookieHandler stores  cookies in an instance of itself. You can compare that
to a Browser instance that is shared between all the endpoints that use it (and will
be used for all invocations of these endpoints). If you want to maintain separate sessions
for different endpoints or groups of endpoints you may have multiple instances of the
InstanceCookieHandler.

The ExchangeCookieHandler stores the session in the exchange. With the browser analogy
this means that each Exchange will get its own browser instance (so sessions are separated).
As the ExchangeCookieHandler does not store any state it is generally not useful to have
multiple ExchangeCookieHandler instances (as they would access the same data, anyway).

Example
+++++++

The following three routes will each do two invocations of an echo REST service. In the first
route (without a cookie handler) each invocation will get a new session. For the second route
all invocations will share a session. For the third route the first and the second invocation
within the route share a session, but different (even parallel) invocations of the route will
not share a session.

[source,xml]
-----------------------------------------------------------
  <cxf:rsClient id="rsClientProxy" address="http://127.0.0.1:8080/CxfRsProducerSessionTest/"
    serviceClass="org.apache.camel.component.cxf.jaxrs.testbean.EchoService"
    loggingFeatureEnabled="true" />
   
  <camelContext id="camel" xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">
    <route>
       <from uri="direct://proxy"/>
       <to uri="cxfrs://bean://rsClientProxy"/>
       <convertBodyTo type="java.lang.String"/>
       <to uri="cxfrs://bean://rsClientProxy"/>
    </route>
    <route>
       <from uri="direct://proxyinstance"/>
       <to uri="cxfrs://bean://rsClientProxy?cookieHandler=#instanceCookieHandler"/>
       <convertBodyTo type="java.lang.String"/>
       <to uri="cxfrs://bean://rsClientProxy?cookieHandler=#instanceCookieHandler"/>
    </route>
    <route>
       <from uri="direct://proxyexchange"/>
       <to uri="cxfrs://bean://rsClientProxy?cookieHandler=#exchangeCookieHandler"/>
       <convertBodyTo type="java.lang.String"/>
       <to uri="cxfrs://bean://rsClientProxy?cookieHandler=#exchangeCookieHandler"/>
    </route>
  </camelContext>

  <bean id="instanceCookieHandler" class="org.apache.camel.http.common.cookie.InstanceCookieHandler"/>
  <bean id="exchangeCookieHandler" class="org.apache.camel.http.common.cookie.ExchangeCookieHandler"/>  
-----------------------------------------------------------

[[HTTPSession-ComponentDevelopers]]
Component Developers
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you want to develop a HTTP based component that is supposed to participate in a session
you have to add the following parts to your code:

. Include a build reference to camel-http-common (if it is not already there)
. Add a cookieHandler parameter to the endpoint class (together with getter and setter)
. Before your code does the HTTP call, if a cookie handler is set on the endpoint 
perform a `cookieHandler.loadCookies(exchange, uri)` call. It will return a 
`Map<String, List<String>>` containing the headers that need to be sent to the server.
The details how you need to send these headers to the server depend on the underlying HTTP
API you are using.
. After your code does receive the HTTP response if a cookie handler is set on the endpoint
perform a `cookieHandler.storeCookies(exchange, uri, m)` call. `m` is a 
`Map<String, List<String>>` containing the HTTP headers returned from the server.

Note: some APIs provide more direct support for cookie handling. In this case it might be easier
to get the underlying `java.net.CookieStore` with a `cookeManager.getCookieStore(exchange)` call
and handle the cookies using the cookie interface provided by the underlying library.