Sessions

rubyonrails-talk
1

The *Agile Web Development with Rails* book has an explanation of sessions that I am having trouble following.

Does anyone know of another good discussion of how Rails manages sessions.

Specifically, in Firefox and and Internet Explorer ... is each browser window a session? Is each invocation of the browser a session?

If I close a browser window ... can I restart the session?

Exactly what is a session and how is state information maintained across browser requests?

2

The *Agile Web Development with Rails* book has an explanation of sessions that I am having trouble following.

Does anyone know of another good discussion of how Rails manages sessions.

Specifically, in Firefox and and Internet Explorer ... is each browser window a session? Is each invocation of the browser a session?

If I close a browser window ... can I restart the session?

Exactly what is a session and how is state information maintained across browser requests?

A session is tied to a cookie (depending on your session store that cookie either contains the session data or an identifier that allows rails to retrieve the session from memcache/database/disk etc.) Your questions above all boil down to what is the scope of a cookie and how long does it last. Cookies can have expiry dates set long in the future, but sessions are handled with cookies that are set to only last until the browser quits (not the same as just closing a window).

Fred

Fred

3

Cookies can have expiry dates set long in the

future, but sessions are handled with cookies that are set to only last until the browser quits (not the same as just closing a window).

Let's say that I'm using Firefox and I open multiple instances of Firefox ... so do all the instances of Firefox know about all the cookies?

When, exactly, does a cookie with no expiration date disappear?

Anyway, is there a more in-depth explanation available anywhere online that you can recommend?

4

Hi Ralph,

start here: Action Controller Overview — Ruby on Rails Guides

Regards, Nicolai

5

Cookies can have expiry dates set long in the

> future, but sessions are handled with cookies that are set to only > last until the browser quits (not the same as just closing a window).

Let's say that I'm using Firefox and I open multiple instances of Firefox ... so do all the instances of Firefox know about all the cookies?

Try it!

Fred