Capturing an existing session on page reload with express / connect-redis function

Question

Using connect, express and socket.io, I am trying to allow my application to capture session data when reconnecting. My sessions obviously work while the client is connected, but if I refresh the page in my browser, it forgets everything.
My session cookie is definitely the same, so it is not.

My code is a big piece of snippets that I took from different sources, since there seems to be no one complete example application .: - /

What am I missing ..?

var qs = require('querystring'), express = require('express'), app = express.createServer(), io = require('socket.io').listen(app.listen(8000)), routes = require('./routes'), pCookie = require('connect').utils.parseCookie, Session = require('connect').middleware.session.Session, RedStore= require('connect-redis')(express), sStore = new RedStore(); // Configuration app.configure(function(){ app.set('views', __dirname + '/views'); app.set('view engine', 'ejs'); app.use(express.bodyParser()); app.use(express.methodOverride()); app.use(express.cookieParser()); app.use(express.session({ store: sStore, secret: 'tehsecretz' })); app.use(app.router); app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public')); }); app.configure('development', function(){ app.use(express.errorHandler({ dumpExceptions: true, showStack: true })); }); app.configure('production', function(){ app.use(express.errorHandler()); }); // Routes app.get('/', routes.index); io.sockets.on('connection', function (client) { var hs = client.handshake, session = hs.session; console.log('A socket connected called: ' + hs.sessionId); var intervalId = setInterval(function() { hs.session.reload(function() { hs.session.touch().save(); }); }, 60 * 1000); if (!session.userName) { // Prompts the user for a name on the frontend client.emit('need-to-register'); } client.on('message', function(msg, c) { console.log(session); console.log(msg); }); client.on('register-user', function(data, fn) { // This retrieves the user name // and - hopefully - saves it to the session. data = qs.parse(data); session.userName = data.username; hs.session.save(); console.log('Saving: ', session); fn('ok'); }); client.on('disconnect', function() { clearInterval(intervalId); }); }); io.set('authorization', function (data, accept) { if (data.headers.cookie) { data.cookie = pCookie(data.headers.cookie); data.sessionId = data.cookie['connect.sid']; data.sessionStore = sStore; sStore.get(data.sessionId, function (err, session) { if (err || !session) { accept('Error', false); } else { console.log(data.sessionId, session); data.session = new Session(data, session); accept(null, true); } }); } else { return accept('No cookie transmitted', false); } }); 

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Ugh. So, in Daniel Baulig's post on this, he refers to sessionID . I figured this was just a bad convention (since I'm used to camelCase) and quickly changed it to sessionID in my code.

As I debugged, I turned on MONITOR ing on my redis instance and noticed that the session was being written to sess:undefined .

Turns off sessionID is special and is referenced internally as the actual identifier. Changing all instances of sessionID to sessionID allows me to better understand who is connecting!

Answer 2

Add a cookie to express.session

 app.use(express.session({ secret: 'exampleSecretKey' ,store: exampleStore ,key: 'example' cookie: { path: '/' ,expires: false // Alive Until Browser Exits ,httpOnly: true // ,domain:'.example.com' } });