I am building an API with Sails.js. For session storage I am using redis. Fun stuff!
The Set-Cookie Response Header contains
sails.sid=<sessionID>; Path=/; HttpOnly
Simple thing in an express application, but I am having a hard time on how to set the expires value for that Cookie. Does anyone know?
Setting ttl for redis does not have any effect by the way.
I found the answer to the above question myself. Just add
cookie: {
maxAge: 60 * 60 * 1000 // example: 60 mins in miliseconds
}
to your sails.js config/session.js file.
If the app is running behind proxy/ revserse proxy ( nginx) and you want to set a secure flag to your cookie just modify:
config/session.js and add these lines:
proxy: true,
cookie: {
secure: true
}
You can use this code in your controller to set cookie expire time
res.cookie('rememberme', '1', { expires: new Date(Date.now() + 900000), httpOnly: true });
Related
I want to set the same maxAge and secure options for all cookies in my express 4 application.
Is there a way to express these defaults like the following pseudocode?:
app.set('cookieSettings', {secure: true, maxAge: 1000})
app.cookie('mySecureCookie, 'foo');
No. I'm afraid the only settings you can manipulate with app.set() are in this list of application settings. You can however pass an object of options to res.cookie(name, value, options) and reuse it whenever you set a cookie:
var cookieOptions = {
maxAge: 10000
};
...
res.cookie('mySecureCookie', 'foo', cookieOptions);
Here is the list of properties you can set in the options object.
We're Node + Express + Passport for authentication, and persisting the session info to Redis. I have maxAge set on the session cookie, to time out in one hour. That all seems to be working fine but the problem is, the session cookie will expire in one hour regardless of the user's activity.
Is there a way I can manually refresh/keep alive the session cookie?
You'll likely want to use the "rolling" option for your session. This "forces a cookie set on every response" and "resets the expiration date." You want to set rolling to true.
Also pay attention to the "resave" option. That "forces session to be saved even when unmodified..." You'll likely want to set that option to true as well. Note that even though the default value is true for this option, you should set the value explicitly. Relying on the default for this option, rather than setting it explicitly, is now deprecated.
Try something like:
app.use( session( { secret: 'keyboard cat',
cookie: { maxAge: 60000 },
rolling: true,
resave: true,
saveUninitialized: false
}
)
);
Here's the documentation. Look under "Options" and "options.resave": https://github.com/expressjs/session .
Yes you can!
If the cookie is unchanged on a request then it will not be resent to the browser, you can check in the developer tools under cookies to verify that. So what some, including myself like to do is to change the cookie on request where there is user activity that should extend the session. Something like the following:
req.session.lastAccess = new Date().getTime();
Another thing I've seen but I've had trouble with is to use the Session#touch:
req.session.touch()
Yes, you can manually reset the maxAge for each cookie after the user logs in:
req.session.cookie.maxAge = 60 * 60 * 1000;
Here is the connect session documentation.
Try this code:
app.use(session({ secret: 'Category', cookie: { maxAge: 6000000 }, resave: true, saveUninitialized: false}));
Bringing this question to SO since the express group didn't have an answer.
I'm setting the session maxAge = 900000 and I see that the the expires property on the session cookie is set correctly.
However, on subsequent requests the timeout is not being extended. It is never extended and the cookie eventually expires.
The session middleware docs say that Session#touch() isn't necessary because the session middleware will do it for me. I actually tried calling req.session.touch() manually and that did nothing, I also tried setting the maxAge on the req.session.cookie as well and that did nothing :-(
Am I missing a setting somewhere to automatically extend active sessions? Short of recreating the cookie manually on each request is there any other way to extend a session timeout after end-user activity?
EDIT: I experienced this problem in express v3. I'm not 100% sure but I think this note from the express changelog may have been the culprit:
changed session() to only set-cookie on modification (hashed session json)
Rolling sessions now exist in express sessions. Setting the rolling attribute to true in the options, it will recalculate the expiry value by setting the maxAge offset, applied to the current time.
https://github.com/expressjs/session/issues/3
https://github.com/expressjs/session/issues/33
https://github.com/expressjs/session (search for rolling)
For example, note the rolling:
app.use(session({
secret: 'a secret',
cookie: {
path: '/',
httpOnly: true,
secure: false,
maxAge: 10 * 60 * 1000
},
rolling: true
}));
Here is the solution in case anyone else has the same issue:
function (req, res, next) {
if ('HEAD' == req.method || 'OPTIONS' == req.method) return next();
// break session hash / force express to spit out a new cookie once per second at most
req.session._garbage = Date();
req.session.touch();
next();
}
In node I have a https server, and I use sessions with a maxage value, here's the code:
app.use(express.cookieParser());
app.use(express.session({
secret: 'secret stuff',
store: sessionStore,
cookie: {
secure: true,
maxAge: 60 * 1000 //1 minute
}
}));
I want a functionality like if the user visits the site within maxAge period (1 min in this case) the cookie timer starts over again, and he/she has 1 minute left to loose it's session id.
I see that the req.session._expires is updated (by the session middleware), but the cookie is left as it is. So the cookie will expire, a new session id connect.sid will be generated.
How can I achieve this? I thought it's automatically done by the session middleware, but seems like the expiration of cookie and expiration of session are two different things, than what session._expires is it for?
Edit
Here DanielBaulig word my problem better. As Marc B wrote in the comments the cookie expires, so the session became orphaned. That's what I want to avoid, I want to renew the cookie, when the session is touched.
Try
cookie: {
secure: true,
expires: new Date(Date.now() + 60 * 1000), // plus 1 minute
maxAge: 60 * 1000 //1 minute
}
I'm thinking the expires Date isn't being reset properly.
I understand that you can set the maxAge when starting up the app as follows:
connect.session({ secret: 'keyboard cat', cookie: { maxAge: 60000 }})
However, i would like to implement something along the lines of "remember me" setting, how would i go about doing that?
Thanks a lot :)
Jason
You can set either expires or maxAge on the individual cookie belonging to the current user:
// This user should log in again after restarting the browser
req.session.cookie.expires = false;
// This user won't have to log in for a year
req.session.cookie.maxAge = 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000;
See connect session documentation.