can not find entity using seam managed persistence context - authentication

Question

I'm trying to change the authentication approach in my seam application. I currently use a login form to authenticate. In the future, I'd like to delegate the authentication to another layer that will rewrite every request with a specific HTTP header containing the username of authenticated user.
I'm facing a weird problem: when using login page to authenticate, I'm able to extract the user through the entityManager. But when I query the entityManager using the information off the header, I'm unable to find the user. The entityManager behave like the user does not exist.
I already tried two approaches:
Creating a fake login page which triggers the authentication process
Creating a servlet which gets the request and starts the
authentication process
Both times, the entityManager fails to return me any user.
I read a lot about how seam manages the persistence context, but I didn't find a single explanation which make this issue clear. Do you have any ideas? suggestions? or even guesses?
the code which uses the entityManager is the following:
#Name("userService")
#AutoCreate
public class UserService {
#Logger
private Log logger;
#In
private EntityManager entityManager;
public User getUser(String email) {
try {
return entityManager
.createQuery("SELECT u FROM User u where u.email=:email",
User.class).setParameter("email", email.trim())
.getSingleResult();
} catch (NoResultException e) {
return null;
}
}
}
The configuration for persistence context is:
<persistence:managed-persistence-context startup="false" scope="stateless"
auto-create="true" name="entityManager" persistence-unit-jndi-name="java:/EntityManagerFactory" />
I created an empty fake login page which executes a page action (authentication) in which i get the request user header as the following:
#Name("applicationAuthenticator")
public class ApplicationAuthenticator {
#Logger
private Log log;
#In
private Identity identity;
#In
private Credentials credentials;
#In(required=true)
private UserService userService;
#Begin
public void login() throws LoginException {
HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequest();
String userName=request.getHeader("user");
identity.unAuthenticate();
credentials.setUsername(userName);
credentials.setPassword("fake");
identity.acceptExternallyAuthenticatedPrincipal(new SimplePrincipal(credentials.getUsername()));
User user=userService.getUserByEmail(credentials.getUsername());
identity.authenticate();
identity.quietLogin();
}
}
Thx in advance :-)

Answer 1

Thx #DaveB for your reply, the code which uses the entityManager is the following:
public User getUser(String email) {
try {
return entityManager
.createQuery("SELECT u FROM User u where u.email=:email",
User.class).setParameter("email", email.trim())
.getSingleResult();
} catch (NoResultException e) {
return null;
}
}
The configuration for persistence context is:
<persistence:managed-persistence-context startup="false" scope="stateless"
auto-create="true" name="entityManager" persistence-unit-jndi-name="java:/EntityManagerFactory" />
I created an empty fake login page which executes a page action (authentication) in which i get the request user header as the following:
HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) FacesContext
.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequest();
String userName = request.getHeader("user");