Question

I am using Locomotive framework for creating a nodejs web-application.

In config/environments/all.js I have:

var express = require('express')
, poweredBy = require('connect-powered-by')
, util = require('util')
, connectAssets = require('connect-assets')
, redis = require('redis')
, RedisStore = require('connect-redis')(express)
, sessionStore = new RedisStore();

........
........

  this.use(express.cookieParser());
  this.use(express.bodyParser());
..........
..........
  this.use(express.session({
    secret: 'LoremIpsumDolorSit_Amet',
    store: sessionStore
  }));

However the session object is not present in the request object. ie. in a controller instance:
this.req.session is undefined. What am I missing and How do I configure the connect-session middleware to use redis data-store ?

My redis server is running on default port and it shows a client connected when I run my server. The client gets disconnected only when I terminate the server.

I am using Node 0.6.18, redis server version 2.4.8, locomotive version 0.3.3 and express 3.0.4 on Fedora 16.

Answer 1

For sessions to work in express, the three of the following must be in this very order:

this.use(express.cookieParser());
this.use(express.session(...));
this.use(this.router);

In my implementation, I had the third statement above the second.

Apparently, this is a known idiosyncrasy with Express and I am not informed enough about the inner workings of Express to explain why this is the case. Probably someone who has more experience with NodeJS can elaborate on the details.