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Session Tracking

As we know that the Http is a stateless protocol, means that it can't persist the information. It always treats each request as a new request. In Http client makes a connection to the server, sends the request., gets the response, and closes the connection.

In session management client first make a request for any servlet or any page, the container receives the request and generate a unique session ID and gives it back to the client along with the response. This ID gets stores on the client machine. Thereafter when the client request again sends a request to the server then it also sends the session Id with the request. There the container sees the Id and sends back the request.

Session Tracking can be done in three ways:

1. Hidden Form Fields: This is one of the way to support the session tracking. As we know by the name, that in this fields are added to an HTML form which are not displayed in the client's request. The hidden form field are sent back to the server when the form is submitted. In hidden form fields the html entry will be like this : <input type ="hidden" name = "name" value="">. This means that when you submit the form, the specified name and value will be get included in get or post method. In this session ID information would be embedded within the form as a hidden field and submitted with the Http POST command.
2. URL Rewriting: This is another way to support the session tracking. URLRewriting can be used in place where we don't want to use cookies. It is used to maintain the session. Whenever the browser sends a request then it is always interpreted as a new request because http protocol is a stateless protocol as it is not persistent. Whenever we want that out request object to stay alive till we decide to end the request object then, there we use the concept of session tracking. In session tracking firstly a session object is created when the first request goes to the server. Then server creates a token which will be used to maintain the session. The token is transmitted to the client by the response object and gets stored on the client machine. By default the server creates a cookie and the cookie get stored on the client machine.
3. Cookies: When cookie based session management is used, a token is generated which contains user's information, is sent to the browser by the server. The cookie is sent back to the server when the user sends a new request. By this cookie, the server is able to identify the user. In this way the session is maintained. Cookie is nothing but a name- value pair, which is stored on the client machine. By default the cookie is implemented in most of the browsers. If we want then we can also disable the cookie. For security reasons, cookie based session management uses two types of cookies.

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