ExternalContext.redirect() for AJAX creates a new HttpSession and may throw a ClassCastException/NullPointerException

[mmariotti]

Hello,

this problem has been discussed on StackOverflow

the code of redirect():

@Override
public void redirect(String requestURI) throws IOException {

    FacesContext ctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
    doLastPhaseActions(ctx, true);

    if (ctx.getPartialViewContext().isPartialRequest()) {
        if (getSession(true) instanceof HttpSession &&    // <----- creates a new HttpSession
            ctx.getResponseComplete()) {
            throw new IllegalStateException();
        }
        PartialResponseWriter pwriter;
        ResponseWriter writer = ctx.getResponseWriter();
        if (writer instanceof PartialResponseWriter) {
            pwriter = (PartialResponseWriter) writer;
        } else {
            pwriter = ctx.getPartialViewContext().getPartialResponseWriter();
        }
        setResponseContentType("text/xml");
        setResponseCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
        addResponseHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache");
//        pwriter.writePreamble("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>\n");
        pwriter.startDocument();
        pwriter.redirect(requestURI);
        pwriter.endDocument();
    } else {
        ((HttpServletResponse) response).sendRedirect(requestURI);  // <----- may throw a ClassCastException/NullPointerException
    }
    ctx.responseComplete();       
}

As you can see there are two problems.

It should be replaced with something like:

@Override
public void redirect(String requestURI) throws IOException {

    FacesContext ctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
    doLastPhaseActions(ctx, true);

    if (ctx.getPartialViewContext().isPartialRequest()) {
        if (response instanceof HttpServletResponse &&
            ctx.getResponseComplete()) {
            throw new IllegalStateException();
        }
        PartialResponseWriter pwriter;
        ResponseWriter writer = ctx.getResponseWriter();
        if (writer instanceof PartialResponseWriter) {
            pwriter = (PartialResponseWriter) writer;
        } else {
            pwriter = ctx.getPartialViewContext().getPartialResponseWriter();
        }
        setResponseContentType("text/xml");
        setResponseCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
        addResponseHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache");
//        pwriter.writePreamble("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>\n");
        pwriter.startDocument();
        pwriter.redirect(requestURI);
        pwriter.endDocument();
    } else if (response instanceof HttpServletResponse) {
        ((HttpServletResponse) response).sendRedirect(requestURI);
    } else {
        throw new IllegalStateException();
    }
    
    ctx.responseComplete();
}