Grails: User logs out while ajax request is running - ajax

Question

There is a Grails (v.2.3.2) web app with Spring Security Core plugin (v.2.0-RC2).
I stumbled upon an issue with users who log out while there is an ajax request running in the background.
The scenario is as follows:
User requests a web page
When the page is ready I fire an ajax request
User logs out while the ajax request is still being processed on the server side
The server side, naturally, heavily depends on the current user, and the app crushes on the third step because the current user suddenly disappears as the springSecurityService indicates that the user is not logged in.
This is the code I used to fetch the current user in the UserService.
public User getLoggedInUser() {
if (!springSecurityService.isLoggedIn()) {
return null
}
User user = User.get(springSecurityService.getPrincipal().id)
user
}
Which, returns the current user alright up until the moment the user logs out, causing the issue.
I came up with the idea to make the UserService stateful and store the current user in a separate field.
static scope = 'request' // create a new instance for every request
private Long currentUserId = null
public User getLoggedInUser() {
if (!currentUserId) {
if (!springSecurityService.isLoggedIn()) {
return null
}
// Store the ID of the current user in the instance variable.
currentUserId = springSecurityService.getPrincipal().id
}
// Fetch and return the user.
return User.get(currentUserId)
}
In addition, I created a new Spring bean which defines a proxy object for my UserService.
userServiceProxy(ScopedProxyFactoryBean) {
targetBeanName = 'userService'
proxyTargetClass = true
}
Now, this works very well for the most scenarios, but fails when there is no web request present. In particular, in BootStrap.groovy, where I use other services of my application.
This is the error message I get:
Error initializing the application: Error creating bean with name 'scopedTarget.userServiceProxy': Scope 'request' is not active for the current thread; consider defining a scoped proxy for this bean if you intend to refer to it from a singleton; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: No thread-bound request found: Are you referring to request attributes outside of an actual web request, or processing a request outside of the originally receiving thread? If you are actually operating within a web request and still receive this message, your code is probably running outside of DispatcherServlet/DispatcherPortlet: In this case, use RequestContextListener or RequestContextFilter to expose the current request.
Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Answer 1

After some investigation and lots of swear words the solution was finally found.
This is the code I use in BootStrap.groovy to mimic an ongoing web request.
class BootStrap {
def init = { ServletContext servletContext ->
// Mock request and response.
HttpServletRequest request = new MockHttpServletRequest(servletContext)
HttpServletResponse response = new MockHttpServletResponse()
// Now store them in the current thread.
GrailsWebRequest grailsRequest = new GrailsWebRequest(request, response, servletContext)
WebUtils.storeGrailsWebRequest(grailsRequest)
/**
* Perform whatever you need to do that requires an active web request.
*/
}
}