socket.io and session?

Question

I'm using express framework. I want to reach session data from socket.io. I tried express dynamicHelpers with client.listener.server.dynamicViewHelpers data, but i can't get session data. Is there a simple way to do this? Please see the code

app.listen(3000);

var io = require('socket.io');
var io = io.listen(app);

io.on('connection', function(client){
    // I want to use session data here
    client.on('message', function(message){
        // or here
    });
    client.on('disconnect', function(){
        // or here
    }); 
});

Answer 1

This won't work for sockets going over the flashsocket transport (it doesn't send the server the needed cookies) but it reliably works for everything else. I just disable the flashsocket transport in my code.

To make it work, in the express/connect side, I explicitly define the session store so I can use it inside socket:

MemoryStore = require('connect/middleware/session/memory'),
var session_store = new MemoryStore();
app.configure(function () {
  app.use(express.session({ store: session_store }));
});

Then inside my socket code, I include the connect framework so I can use its cookie parsing to retrieve the connect.sid from the cookies. I then look up the session in the session store that has that connect.sid like so:

var connect = require('connect');
io.on('connection', function(socket_client) {
  var cookie_string = socket_client.request.headers.cookie;
  var parsed_cookies = connect.utils.parseCookie(cookie_string);
  var connect_sid = parsed_cookies['connect.sid'];
  if (connect_sid) {
    session_store.get(connect_sid, function (error, session) {
      //HOORAY NOW YOU'VE GOT THE SESSION OBJECT!!!!
    });
  }
});

You can then use the session as needed.