Persist an HTTP session across all SOAP calls

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 1 minute to read
  • In circumstances when a SOAP client makes many calls in a short amount of time, you may want to re-use a single HTTP session for all SOAP calls.

    Each SOAP call creates a new user session that persists until it expires. To create a single user session and re-use it for all inbound SOAP calls, develop your SOAP client following these guidelines:
    • Use a module like HTTP::Cookies to create a "cookie jar."
    • Save the cookies returned by ServiceNow after each request (handled automatically by HTTP::Cookies).
    • Re-send the cookies in the cookie jar with each subsequent request.
    Note:
    If you have enabled the session rotation high security setting, it will immediately invalidate the JSESSIONID returned from the server with the first response header. The second response includes a new JSESSIONID.
    In perl, you can automatically save and send cookies with the following code:
    use HTTP::Cookies;
    
    #we want to store and re-send cookies
    my $cookies = HTTP::Cookies->new(ignore_discard => 1);
    
    my $soap = SOAP::Lite
        -> proxy('http://localhost:8080/glide/ecc_queue.do?SOAP');
    
    #Set the cookie jar
    $soap->transport->cookie_jar($cookies);