Impossible to provide a Custom SessionRepository

[herveDarritchon]

In a spring-boot context( v2.1.5.RELEASE), I use spring-session (2.1.4.RELEASE) with REDIS. But in our premise infrastructure, REDIS comes with Dynomite from Netflix to do the cross datacenter replication and high availability. And Dynomite doesn’t support PUB/SUB commands.
So we need to write our own custom sessionRepository with no pub/sub commands.
It’s where I have an issue with Spring Boot Autoconfiguration, I should be able to do easily this customization if I trust the documentation (https://docs.spring.io/spring-session/docs/current-SNAPSHOT/reference/html/custom-sessionrepository.html#custom-sessionrepository).

But I failed to do this. I asked questions in Gitter, firstly in Spring-Session with no succes () and after in Spring-Boot, where I have been suggested to raise an issue by Andy Wilkinson @wilkinsona.

please find below some part of our code.

dependencies in a build.gradle

val springBootVersion = "2.1.4.RELEASE"
val springSessionDataRedisVersion = "2.1.5.RELEASE"

implementation("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-security:$springBootVersion")
implementation("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf:$springBootVersion")
implementation("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:$springBootVersion")
implementation("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-data-redis:$springBootVersion")
implementation("org.springframework.session:spring-session-data-redis:$springSessionDataRedisVersion")

Our configuration class to override the sessionRepository with our custom one

@Configuration
@EnableRedisHttpSession
public class SessionConfig extends AbstractHttpSessionApplicationInitializer     {

@Bean
@Primary
public SessionRepository sessionRepository() {
    return new RedisDynoSessionRepository();
    }
}

The sessionRepository custom class

public class RedisDynoSessionRepository implements
    FindByIndexNameSessionRepository<RedisDynoSessionRepository.RedisSession>
...
}

When we run our app, we have a collision in the bean because the app finds that the bean session repository is already known.

org.springframework.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionOverrideException: Invalid bean definition with name 'sessionRepository' defined in class path resource [com/orange/ccmd/spring/redis/SessionConfig.class]: Cannot register bean definition [Root bean: class [null]; scope=; abstract=false; lazyInit=false; autowireMode=3; dependencyCheck=0; autowireCandidate=true; primary=false; factoryBeanName=sessionConfig; factoryMethodName=sessionRepository; initMethodName=null; destroyMethodName=(inferred); defined in class path resource [com/orange/ccmd/spring/redis/SessionConfig.class]] for bean 'sessionRepository': There is already [Root bean: class [null]; scope=; abstract=false; lazyInit=false; autowireMode=3; dependencyCheck=0; autowireCandidate=true; primary=false; factoryBeanName=org.springframework.session.data.redis.config.annotation.web.http.RedisHttpSessionConfiguration; factoryMethodName=sessionRepository; initMethodName=null; destroyMethodName=(inferred); defined in class path resource [org/springframework/session/data/redis/config/annotation/web/http/RedisHttpSessionConfiguration.class]] bound.

If we use the bean override configuration of spring-boot :

spring.main.allow-bean-definition-overriding=true

Spring complains because there are not the same types

[11:28:49.894] WARN   [nConfigServletWebServerApplicationContext] Exception encountered during context initialization - cancelling refresh attempt: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'redisMessageListenerContainer' defined in class path resource [org/springframework/session/data/redis/config/annotation/web/http/RedisHttpSessionConfiguration.class]: Bean instantiation via factory method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Failed to instantiate [org.springframework.data.redis.listener.RedisMessageListenerContainer]: Factory method 'redisMessageListenerContainer' threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: @Bean method RedisHttpSessionConfiguration.sessionRepository called as bean reference for type [org.springframework.session.data.redis.RedisOperationsSessionRepository] but overridden by non-compatible bean instance of type [com.orange.ccmd.spring.redis.RedisDynoSessionRepository]. Overriding bean of same name declared in: class path resource [com/orange/ccmd/spring/redis/SessionConfig.class]

I’d like to know the proper way to provide my own implementation of a sessionRepository to Spring and I'd like to know if there is an issue in Spring Session or not ?

from Spring Session gitter :

I don't think this is a problem with Boot's auto-configuration. It will back off when you declare your own SessionRepository bean
It looks like a couple of Spring Session problems to me:
It seems to rely on bean definition overriding to allow a custom SessionRepository to be configured
When bean definition overriding is permitted, RedisHttpSessionConfiguration makes some assumptions about the type of the SessionRepository which do not hold true

Andy Wilkinson @wilkinsona 12:32
If I were you, I would open a Spring Session issue. Ideally, Spring Session would allow repository customization with bean definition overriding disabled. Putting that aside, I think a change is still needed to RedisHttpSessionConfiguration regardless

[vpavic]

As stated in the reference manual that you linked, to reuse core Spring Session infrastructure and provide your own SessionRepository implementation you need to use @EnableSpringHttpSession annotation.

The problem you are facing is caused by use of @EnableRedisHttpSession that is focused on configuring RedisOperationsSessionRepository.

Does this help?

[herveDarritchon]

@vpavic Yes, it helps a lot, it puts me on the good track :) Thanks a lot !
I should have seen that @EnableRedisHttpSession imports @EnableSpringHttpSession imports @Import(RedisHttpSessionConfiguration.class) whereas @Import(SpringHttpSessionConfiguration.class).
I am a kind of newbie in this so sorry to have raised an issue where as it was written in the documentation. May be not so clear for junior people like :)
Thanks for your help. I will keep working on my custom repository.

Do you think it would be interesting to propose it as a PR or may be a link somewhere if it's good enough as I saw that other people ask for such a thing ?

[vpavic]

Glad to hear that helped @herveDarritchon. Regarding community extensions, if you decide to create a project around your custom SessionRepository implementation, feel free to either open an issue or PR to add it to community extensions section of our reference manual.