Sessions variables in golang not saved while using gorilla sessions

Question

Session Variables are not maintained across request while using gorilla sessions web toolkit. When I start the server and type localhost:8100/ page is directed to login.html since session values do not exist.After I login I set the session variable in the store and the page is redirected to home.html. But when I open a new tab and type localhost:8100/ the page should be directed to home.html using already stored session variables, but the page is instead redirected to login.html. Following is the code.

    package main

import (
    "crypto/md5"
    "encoding/hex"
    "fmt"
    "github.com/gocql/gocql"
    "github.com/gorilla/mux"
    "github.com/gorilla/sessions"
    "net/http"
    "time"
)

var store = sessions.NewCookieStore([]byte("something-very-secret"))

var router = mux.NewRouter()

func init() {

    store.Options = &sessions.Options{
        Domain:   "localhost",
        Path:     "/",
        MaxAge:   3600 * 1, // 1 hour
        HttpOnly: true,
    }
}
func main() {
    //session handling
    router.HandleFunc("/", SessionHandler)
    router.HandleFunc("/signIn", SignInHandler)
    router.HandleFunc("/signUp", SignUpHandler)
    router.HandleFunc("/logOut", LogOutHandler)
    http.Handle("/", router)
    http.ListenAndServe(":8100", nil)
}

//handler for signIn
func SignInHandler(res http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {

    email := req.FormValue("email")
    password := req.FormValue("password")

    //Generate hash of password
    hasher := md5.New()
    hasher.Write([]byte(password))
    encrypted_password := hex.EncodeToString(hasher.Sum(nil))

    //cassandra connection
    cluster := gocql.NewCluster("localhost")
    cluster.Keyspace = "gbuy"
    cluster.DefaultPort = 9042
    cluster.Consistency = gocql.Quorum
    session, _ := cluster.CreateSession()
    defer session.Close()

    //select query
    var firstname string
    stmt := "SELECT firstname FROM USER WHERE email= '" + email + "' and password ='" + encrypted_password + "';"
    err := session.Query(stmt).Scan(&firstname)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Fprintf(res, "failed")
    } else {
        if firstname == "" {
            fmt.Fprintf(res, "failed")
        } else {
            fmt.Fprintf(res, firstname)
        }
    }

    //store in session variable
    sessionNew, _ := store.Get(req, "loginSession")

    // Set some session values.
    sessionNew.Values["email"] = email
    sessionNew.Values["name"] = firstname

    // Save it.
    sessionNew.Save(req, res)
    //store.Save(req,res,sessionNew)

    fmt.Println("Session after logging:")
    fmt.Println(sessionNew)

}

//handler for signUp
func SignUpHandler(res http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {

    fName := req.FormValue("fName")
    lName := req.FormValue("lName")
    email := req.FormValue("email")
    password := req.FormValue("passwd")
    birthdate := req.FormValue("date")
    city := req.FormValue("city")
    gender := req.FormValue("gender")

    //Get current timestamp and format it.
    sysdate := time.Now().Format("2006-01-02 15:04:05-0700")

    //Generate hash of password
    hasher := md5.New()
    hasher.Write([]byte(password))
    encrypted_password := hex.EncodeToString(hasher.Sum(nil))

    //cassandra connection
    cluster := gocql.NewCluster("localhost")
    cluster.Keyspace = "gbuy"
    cluster.DefaultPort = 9042
    cluster.Consistency = gocql.Quorum
    session, _ := cluster.CreateSession()
    defer session.Close()

    //Insert the data into the Table
    stmt := "INSERT INTO USER (email,firstname,lastname,birthdate,city,gender,password,creation_date) VALUES ('" + email + "','" + fName + "','" + lName + "','" + birthdate + "','" + city + "','" + gender + "','" + encrypted_password + "','" + sysdate + "');"
    fmt.Println(stmt)
    err := session.Query(stmt).Exec()
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Fprintf(res, "failed")
    } else {
        fmt.Fprintf(res, fName)
    }
}

//handler for logOut
func LogOutHandler(res http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
    sessionOld, err := store.Get(req, "loginSession")

    fmt.Println("Session in logout")
    fmt.Println(sessionOld)
    if err = sessionOld.Save(req, res); err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Error saving session: %v", err)
    }
}

//handler for Session
func SessionHandler(res http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {

    router.PathPrefix("/").Handler(http.FileServer(http.Dir("../static/")))
    session, _ := store.Get(req, "loginSession")

    fmt.Println("Session in SessionHandler")
    fmt.Println(session)


    if val, ok := session.Values["email"].(string); ok {
        // if val is a string
        switch val {
        case "": {
            http.Redirect(res, req, "html/login.html", http.StatusFound) }
        default:
            http.Redirect(res, req, "html/home.html", http.StatusFound)
        }
    } else {
        // if val is not a string type
        http.Redirect(res, req, "html/login.html", http.StatusFound)
    }
}

Can somebody tell me what I am doing wrong. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

First up: you should never, ever, use md5 to hash passwords. Read this article on why, and then use Go's bcrypt package. You should also parameterise your SQL queries else you are open to catastrophic SQL injection attacks.

Anyway: there are a few problems you need to address here:

• Your sessions aren't "sticking" is that you're setting the Path as /loginSession - so when a user visits any other path (i.e. /), the session isn't valid for that scope.

You should be setting up a session store on program initialisation and setting the options there:

var store = sessions.NewCookieStore([]byte("something-very-secret"))

func init() {

   store.Options = &sessions.Options{
    Domain:   "localhost",
    Path:     "/",
    MaxAge:   3600 * 8, // 8 hours
    HttpOnly: true,
}

The reason you might set a more specific path is if logged in users are always within a sub-route like /accounts. In your case, that's not what's happening.

I should add that Chrome's "Resource" tab in the Web Inspector (Resources > Cookies) is incredibly useful for debugging issues like these as you can see the cookie expiry, path and other settings.

• You're also checking session.Values["email"] == nil, which doesn't work. An empty string in Go is just "", and because session.Values is a map[string]interface{}, you need to type assert the value to a string:

i.e.

if val, ok := session.Values["email"].(string); ok {
      // if val is a string
      switch val {
             case "":
                 http.Redirect(res, req, "html/login.html", http.StatusFound)
             default:
                 http.Redirect(res, req, "html/home.html", http.StatusFound)
      }
    } else {
        // if val is not a string type
        http.Redirect(res, req, "html/login.html", http.StatusFound)
    }

We deal with the "not a string" case so we're explicit about what the program should do if the session is not how we expected (client modified it, or an older version of our program used a different type).

• You are not checking errors when saving your sessions.

  sessionNew.Save(req, res)
  

... should be:

    err := sessionNew.Save(req, res)
    if err != nil {
            // handle the error case
    }

• You should get/validate the session in SessionHandler before serving static files (you are doing it in a very roundabout way, however):

  func SessionHandler(res http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) {
      session, err := store.Get(req, "loginSession")
      if err != nil {
          // Handle the error
      }
  
      if session.Values["email"] == nil {
          http.Redirect(res, req, "html/login.html", http.StatusFound)
      } else {
         http.Redirect(res, req, "html/home.html", http.StatusFound)
      }
      // This shouldn't be here - router isn't scoped in this function! You should set this in your main() and wrap it with a function that checks for a valid session.
      router.PathPrefix("/").Handler(http.FileServer(http.Dir("../static/")))
  }