ClassCastException while passing object from one context to another

Question

I am hoping that someone will bear with me as I think it is my knowledge of classloaders that is tripping me up. I am using Spring and have a SecurityContextImpl object that I want to pass from one web app (WA2) to another web app (WA1). In WA2 I do the following:
ServletContext wa1Context = getServletContext().getContext("WA1");
wa1Context.setAttribute("SPRING_SECURITY_CONTEXT" , SecurityContextImpl);WA1 then tries to get the SPRING_SECURITY_CONTEXT and cast it to a SecurityContext object. This is where I get the ClassCastException. I have:
crossContext="true"in my context.xml fragment. My reading tells me that I may be able to get around this by copying all the spring jars into my Tomcat lib folder but I seem to have to copy so much in there (Spring, hibernate, atomikos etc.) that it does not seem to be a good solution; I gave up before copying all the dependencies it asked for. Is there another way around this problem?
What I really want to do is find an easy way to copy this one object from WA2 into WA1.

Answer 1

Thanks for taking the time to test this. I also tried with a String and was successful but still cannot get it to work with my SecurityContextImpl. I also tried passing a String wrapped in a custom bean with a single string property. I get the same ClassCastException. I think that using a String works because it is native to the JVM and somehow bypasses the class loading issue but as I say, my knowledge of classloaders is null.
Here is the exact code I am running in WA1 and WA2:
In WA2 (context is /forum):
ServletContext servletContext = httpRequest.getSession().getServletContext().getContext("/");
servletContext.setAttribute("SPRING_SECURITY_CONTEXT", httpRequest.getSession().getAttribute("SPRING_SECURITY_CONTEXT"));
logger.debug("It was of type [" + httpRequest.getSession().getAttribute("SPRING_SECURITY_CONTEXT").getClass().getName() + "]");In WA1 (A JSP sitemesh decorator with context "/"):
Object object = getServletContext().getAttribute("SPRING_SECURITY_CONTEXT");
System.out.println("IN DECORATOR, OBJECT IS OF TYPE [" + object.getClass().getName() + "]");
SecurityContext securityContext = (SecurityContext) object;The log output is:
DEBUG uk.co.prodia.prosoc.security.spring.cas.login.CheckDecoratorKnowsAboutLogin  - It was of type [org.springframework.security.context.SecurityContextImpl]
IN DECORATOR, OBJECT2 IS OF TYPE [org.springframework.security.context.SecurityContextImpl]