Edge: Session Cookie Fix Causing Issues for Legacy App

rubyonrails-talk
1

I love the idea of the cookie fix for session storage. But... I've gone round and round to get edge working with a legacy app and wonder if anyone has any pointers. Here's what's happening. I fresh-installed:

rails foo cd foo rake rails:freeze:edge rake rails:update -- add secret to environment.rb --

All good, passing tests, no problems with session cookies. Then I cp -r my application tree over, preserving environment.rb. After that copy, I get:

ArgumentError (`name' required):     /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/cgi_ext/cookie_performance_fix.rb:44:in `initialize'     /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/session/cookie_store.rb:129:in `new'     /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/session/cookie_store.rb:129:in `write_cookie'     /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/session/cookie_store.rb:87:in `close'     /opt/local/lib/ruby/1.8/cgi/session.rb:324:in `close'     /vendor/rails/actionpack/lib/action_controller/base.rb:1209:in `close_session' <and other stuff waaaay back in the call tree>

I've verified that the cookie name is coming in as empty and the ArgumentError is being raised for a reason. I just don't see why that would be.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

Here's more about the environment:

About your application's environment Ruby version 1.8.5 (i686-darwin8.8.1) RubyGems version 0.9.1 Rails version 1.2.0 Active Record version 1.14.4 Action Pack version 1.12.5 Action Web Service version 1.1.6 Action Mailer version 1.2.5 Active Support version 1.3.1 Edge Rails revision 6414 Application root /Users/sxross/rails/amu_edge Environment development Database adapter mysql Database schema version 0

Plugins:

exception_notification file_column haml <two that I wrote that don't hack rails>

2

You need to provide :session_key and :secret session options in environment.rb. It's generated for you in new apps.   config.action_controller.session = { :session_key => '_myapp_session', :secret => 'ssh! be quiet' } Note that it's moving from application.rb to the environment.

I added an explicit ArgumentError rather than letting it fall through to an empty cookie name.   http://dev.rubyonrails.org/changeset/6415

jeremy

3

Thanks so much. Cookie-based sessions should be an amazing help.

steve

Jeremy Kemper wrote:

4

Here's a follow-up question. Are session_id values guaranteed to
remain the same between calls? I know you aren't relying on the
session_id to identify the information anymore.

I only ask because I've been looking at Simple Captcha, which uses
the session_id as part of the hash that identifies the captcha answer
in pstore. Oddly, the session_id works perfectly with this when using
AR session store, but not with the new cookie-based session store.

Thoughts?

Thx

5

Here's a follow-up question. Are session_id values guaranteed to remain the same between calls? I know you aren't relying on the session_id to identify the information anymore.

The session cookie now contains data rather than an id.

I only ask because I've been looking at Simple Captcha, which uses the session_id as part of the hash that identifies the captcha answer in pstore. Oddly, the session_id works perfectly with this when using AR session store, but not with the new cookie-based session store.

You can store an id in the session data instead.

Rick Olson's CSRF-prevention plugin takes this approach.

jeremy