Before you use Spring Session, you must ensure to update your dependencies. We assume you are working with a working Spring Boot web application. If you are using Maven, ensure to add the following dependencies:

<dependencies>
	<!-- ... -->
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.springframework.session</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-session-jdbc</artifactId>
	</dependency>
</dependencies>

Spring Boot provides dependency management for Spring Session modules, so there’s no need to explicitly declare dependency version.

After adding the required dependencies, we can create our Spring Boot configuration. Thanks to first-class auto configuration support, setting up Spring Session backed by a relational database is as simple as adding a single configuration property to your application.properties :

spring.session.store-type=jdbc # Session store type.

Under the hood, Spring Boot will apply configuration that is equivalent to manually adding @EnableJdbcHttpSession annotation. This creates a Spring Bean with the name of springSessionRepositoryFilter that implements Filter. The filter is what is in charge of replacing the HttpSession implementation to be backed by Spring Session.

Further customization is possible using application.properties :

server.servlet.session.timeout= # Session timeout. If a duration suffix is not specified, seconds will be used.
spring.session.jdbc.initialize-schema=embedded # Database schema initialization mode.
spring.session.jdbc.schema=classpath:org/springframework/session/jdbc/[email protected]@[email protected]@.sql # Path to the SQL file to use to initialize the database schema.
spring.session.jdbc.table-name=SPRING_SESSION # Name of the database table used to store sessions.

For more information, refer to Spring Session portion of the Spring Boot documentation.

Spring Boot automatically creates a DataSource that connects Spring Session to an embedded instance of H2 database. In a production environment you need to ensure to update your configuration to point to your relational database. For example, you can include the following in your application.properties

spring.datasource.url= # JDBC URL of the database.
spring.datasource.username= # Login username of the database.
spring.datasource.password= # Login password of the database.

For more information, refer to Configure a DataSource portion of the Spring Boot documentation.

Our Spring Boot Configuration created a Spring Bean named springSessionRepositoryFilter that implements Filter . The springSessionRepositoryFilter bean is responsible for replacing the HttpSession with a custom implementation that is backed by Spring Session.

In order for our Filter to do its magic, Spring needs to load our Config class. Last we need to ensure that our Servlet Container (i.e. Tomcat) uses our springSessionRepositoryFilter for every request. Fortunately, Spring Boot takes care of both of these steps for us.

The httpsession-jdbc-boot Sample Application demonstrates how to use Spring Session to transparently leverage H2 database to back a web application’s HttpSession when using Spring Boot.

5.1. Running the httpsession-jdbc-boot Sample Application

You can run the sample by obtaining the source code and invoking the following command:

$ ./gradlew :spring-session-sample-boot-jdbc:bootRun

You should now be able to access the application at http://localhost:8080/

5.2. Exploring the security Sample Application

5.3. How does it work?

When a new HttpSession is created, Spring Session creates a cookie named SESSION in your browser that contains the id of your session. Go ahead and view the cookies (click for help with Chrome or Firefox ).

If you like, you can easily remove the session using H2 web console available at: http://localhost:8080/h2-console/ (use jdbc:h2:mem:testdb for JDBC URL)

Now visit the application at http://localhost:8080/ and observe that we are no longer authenticated.