Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) General Discussion

Hi to everyone,
I've a jsf page, in this page i'm setting a session attribute with this code:
<%request.setAttribute("user", "admin"); %>
i've a submit button with action like this:

<h:commandButton styleClass="aButton" value="Aggiorna"
style="vertical-align:middle;" action="# {UserBean.update}"/>

In the method updatei want retrive the attribute "user" so i've write this code in update function:

FacesContext ctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest)ctx.getExternalContext().getRequest();
//LoginBean lb = (LoginBean) app.createValueBinding("#{login}).getValue(ctx);
user = (String)request.getAttribute("user");

but the user is null, why?
Can someone help me?

Thanks, Fabio.