Session

A session is a mechanism that enables websites to store and retrieve user-specific information temporarily. It allows for personalized and stateful interactions during a user's visit.

Example use cases

• User authentication: Keeping track of whether a user is logged in or not.
• Shopping cart persistence: Retaining items in a user's shopping cart across different pages.
• Personalized preferences: Storing and recalling user-specific settings or preferences.

In memory session store

The Boring JavaScript Stack ships with the tried and tested session-based authentication. In development you can rely on the in-memory Sails session store that works out of the box.

Because the default session store is in memory, when you close the Sails server, the current session store disappears.

INFO

Learn more about how sessions work on the Sails docs.

Persistent session store

Redis is a popular choice to use as a persistent session store. To set it up, install @sailshq/connect-redis and then update config/session.js:

terminal

npm i @sailshq/connect-redis --save

config/session.js

module.exports.session = {
  adapter: '@sailshq/connect-redis',
  url: 'redis://localhost:6379'
}

Accessing the session store

In The Boring JavaScript Stack, the session store is accessed in your actions via this.req.session. This provides a convenient way to interact with user session data within your application. Below is an example of logging in a user:

module.exports = {
  fn: async function ({ email, password, rememberMe }) {
    const user = await User.findOne({
      email: email.toLowerCase()
    })

    if (!user) {
      throw 'badCombo'
    }

    await sails.helpers.passwords
      .checkPassword(password, user.password)
      .intercept('incorrect', 'badCombo')

    if (rememberMe) {
      this.req.session.cookie.maxAge =
        sails.config.custom.rememberMeCookieMaxAge
    }

    this.req.session.userId = user.id
    return '/'
  }
}