How to see session attributes in GemFire Pulse/Gfsh when using Spring Session for Pivotal GemFire?

Question

We are able to save/retrieve data to/from GemFire through Spring Session management.

     session.getAttribute(sessionKey)    // session is from gemfire.

In GemFire Pulse, we are able to see the session ID by using the query...

     select * from /regionName.keySet 

How do we see the attributes and values stored against a particular session id?

Answer 1

The short answer is "you can't", at least not using pure GemFire API, which includes gfsh, PULSE and/or direct OQL execution through the QueryService.

You might, however, achieve this use case programmatically using the Spring Repository abstraction; specifically through the FindByIndexNameSessionRepository, already supported by Spring Session for Apache Geode/Pivotal GemFire.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Well, this is not entirely true.

It is possible to inspect the Session object, the Session attributes and the Session attribute values (i.e. application domain objects store in the Session) using very carefully crafted OQL query statements, in either Gfsh or Pulse's DataBrowser Tool (extension).

When using Spring Session for Apache Geode/Pivotal GemFire (SSDG), you can use the following OQL queries to inspect the Session (e.g. HttpSession).

You must be mindful, that certain OQL queries, depending on the Serialization format, may cause your application domain objects, or even SSDG's Session objects to get deserialized, in which case, you need to put SSDG, all of SSDG's dependencies (e.g. the core Spring Framework) and your application domain object types (i.e. classes) for the objects stored in the Session on the server(s) classpath.

Also see this related SO question/answer.

Hope this helps!