How to find a session from the MongoDB collection using Express and MongoStore

Question

I am implementing session storage using Node / Express / Mongo. My problem is that I cannot get any sessions from my sessions collection, so I cannot determine if the user has already been registered.

I use MongoSkin, MongoStore and mongo-connect, although I do not mind using Mongoose and other tools.

Here is my debug output:

 // Check whether the current user has a session. // If so, adds "currentUser" to the request. // Else, redirect to the login page. function loadUser(req, res, next) { console.log("loadUser: checking loadUser..."); var db = req.db; console.log("current req.session.token:"); console.log(req.session.token); console.log("current req.session:"); console.log(req.session); if (req.session.token) { // Look up the session id in the database 'sessions' collection. db.collection('sessions').findOne({token : req.session.token}, function(err, user) { console.log("found user by looking up token:"); console.log(user); if (user) { req.currentUser = user; next(); } else { console.log("token not in 'sessions', redirecting..."); res.redirect('/login/webapp_login.html'); } }); } else { console.log("no token, redirecting..."); res.redirect('/login/webapp_login.html'); } } 

And here is the console output:

 loadUser: checking loadUser... current req.session._id: 53acb8e1b7b297dc29681def current req.session: { cookie: { path: '/', _expires: null, originalMaxAge: null, httpOnly: true }, isLogged: 21, username: 'sessiontest1', token: '57a6dfe0bea9150bd4e2d1f76974e88b', } found user by looking up token: null token not in 'sessions', redirecting... 

As well as:

  db.collection('sessions').find(req.session._id, function(user) { 

I also tried:

 db.collection('sessions').findOne({session:{token:req.session.token}}, function(err, user) { 

but i still get null and the function redirects. Am I missing something? Any suggestions would be helpful. I use MongoSkin, although I am also open to solutions in Mongoose.

In addition, I know that my database is configured correctly because I checked the command line:

 > db.sessions.find().pretty() { "_id" : "vnftBGNFVQ3S4lHiIB_omOxWDu01kFuH", "session" : "{\"cookie\":{\"originalMaxAge\":null,\"expires\":null,\"httpOnly\":t rue,\"path\":\"/\"},\"isLogged\":6}", "expires" : ISODate("2014-07-09T03:44:54.863Z") } { "_id" : "-AMKc_kIzOOAn_eQJ6RJpvTgWoargLaJ", "session" : "{\"cookie\":{\"originalMaxAge\":null,\"expires\":null,\"httpOnly\":t rue,\"path\":\"/\"},\"isLogged\":20,\"username\":\"sessiontest1\",\"token\":\"57a6dfe0bea 9150bd4e2d1f76974e88b\"}", "expires" : ISODate("2014-07-11T06:35:14.835Z") } 

What is going wrong and why can't I get a session from the sessions collection?

Update launch

db.collection ('sessions'). find ({"session": /./}, function (err, user) {

gives me a conclusion, so I believe that the problem is with the record with a field in the session field line. The session field specified in the database output above is problematic because it is one long string and not a nested JSON.

Also, my sessions entries are automatically added after adding this to my app.js :

 app.use(expressSession({ secret: 's3cretc0de', store: new MongoStore({ url: mongoUrl }, function () { console.log("db session connection open"); }) })); 

And I added the token and username fields to my router, as shown below:

 router.get('/verify', function(req, res) { req.session.username = username; req.session.token = req.query.token; } 

Am I missing something? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

When you use MongoStore to store your session data, you do not need to query MongoDB directly. The module does everything for you.

You can simply use req.session to get session data.

So, on your routes, you can do something like:

 app.get('/', function(req, res){ // check if the username is set in the session if (!req.session.username) { // redirect it to login page res.redirect('/login'); } else { // do something } }); app.post('/login', function(req, res) { // you would check check the username & password here // if (username == '...' /&& password ...) // set the username in the session session req.session.username = username; });