Modifying the session data from inside the socket.io callback

Question

I am currently using this stack expres, socket.io, sessionstore. I followed the article here http://www.danielbaulig.de/socket-ioexpress/. Well the problem is that i cannot modify the session values in socket.io callback.

Access from express side works well, the item get increased after each refresh.

app.get('/mysession', function(req, res) {
  req.session.item++;
  console.log(req.session);

  res.render('session.jade', {
    title: 'Sample title'
  });
});

Using in socket.io side it does not and here is the problem, maybe i am setting the wrong object.

var io = io.listen(app);
io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) {
  var handshake = socket.handshake;
  onlineCount++;
  console.log('Well done id %s', handshake.sessionID);
  handshake.session.item++;

  console.log(handshake.session);

});

Here is bridge code.

io.set('authorization', function(data, accept) {
  if (data.headers.cookie) {
    data.cookie = parseCookie(data.headers.cookie);
    data.sessionID = data.cookie['express.sid'];
    sessionStore.get(data.sessionID, function(err, session) {
      if (err || !session) {
        accept('Error', false);
      } else {
        data.session = session;
        accept(null, true);
      }
    });
  } else {
    return accept('No cookie tansmitted', false);
  }
});

ziad-saab ziad-saab · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-02T15:24:54

The only way I found to make this work is to grab the cookie from the request object on the connect event, parse it with your favourite cookie parser (I use connect.utils.parseCookie), and set it on that socket so that I may access it in future events:

socket.on('connection', function(client) {
  var cookie = client.request.headers.cookie;
  var pcookie = connect.utils.parseCookie(cookie);
  var session_id = pcookie["connect.sid"];
  if (session_id) {
    sessionStore.get(session_id, function(err, sess) {
      // do whatever you want with sess here
      // ...
      // if you want to "save" the session for future events
      client.set('session_id', session_id);
    }
  }
});

Modifying the session data from inside the socket.io callback

2 Answers