Common shared data objects for entire application - spring-boot

Question

I have some data objects that are common across a Spring boot application - one is the logged in employee object and other is a category. I have created a #Component class which contains these are static variables. This way I do not even have to autowire them. They can be used directly like CurrentContext.employee in controllers.
#Component
public final class CurrentContext {
public static Category currentCategory;
public static Employee employee;
#Autowired
private CategoryService categoryService;
#Autowired
private EmployeeService employeeService;
#EventListener
public void onApplicationEvent(ContextRefreshedEvent event) {
currentCategory = categoryService.getCategory();
}
#EventListener
public void onLoginSuccess(InteractiveAuthenticationSuccessEvent event) {
employee = employeeService.getEmployeeByUserId(((MyUserDetails) event.getAuthentication().getPrincipal()).getUserId());
}
}
Is this a right way? Please suggest if there is a better way to handle shared data
Edit
Some background - I require the current logged in employee and a category which is common for all employees. So I autowired employeeService and categoryService in my controllers and use them to get the data. They are required in almost all my controller methods, so, I wanted to create a bean of these so that I directly use them in my controller and also save frequent database calls.

Answer 1

Normally, we only put the dependencies related to the cross-cutting concerns (i.e dependencies that are across the whole application such as security , logging , transaction stuff , time provider etc.) in the static field.
By accessing these kind of dependencies in the static way , we don't need to pass them through method parameters /constructors from object to object , which will make the API much cleaner without such noise (BTW. This is called Ambient Context Pattern in the .NET world).
Your Employee object most probably belong to this type , so it is ok to access it in a static way. But as their scope is per session , you cannot simply put it in the static field of a class. If yes, then you always get the same employee for all sessions. Instead, you have to somehow store it in an object which is session scope (e.g HttpSession) . Then at the beginning of handling a web request , you get it from the session and then put it in a ThreadLocal which is encapsulated inside a "ContextHolder" object. You then access that "ContextHolder" in a static way.
Sound very complicated and scary ? Don't worry as Spring Security has already implemented this stuff for you. What you need to do is to customize Authentication#getPrincipal()or extend default Authentication to contain your Employee. Then get it using SecurityContextHolder.getContext().getAuthentication()
For your currentCategory , if they are not the cross-cutting concerns and is the application scope , make a singleton bean to get it values is a much better OOP design.
#Component
public final class CurrentCategoryProvider {
#Autowired
private CategoryService categoryService;
public Category getCurrentCategory(){
//or cache the value to the an internal properties depending on your requirements
return categoryService.getCategory();
}
}
You then inject CurrentCategoryProvider to the bean that need to access currentCategory.