Ruby on Rails 2.1 - Session and Cookies

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Sessions

To save data across multiple requests, you can use either the session or the flash hashes. A flash stores a value (normally text) until the next request, while a session stores data during the complete session.

session[:user] = @user
flash[:message] = "Data was saved successfully"
<%= link_to "login", :action => 'login' unless session[:user] %>
<% if flash[:message] %>
<div><%= h flash[:message] %></div>
<% end %>

It's possible to turn off session management.

session :off                        # turn session management off
session :off, :only => :action      # only for this :action
session :off, :except => :action    # except for this action
session :only => :foo,              # only for :foo when doing HTTPS
        :session_secure => true 
session :off, :only=>:foo, # off for foo,if uses as Web Service
        :if => Proc.new { |req| req.parameters[:ws] }

Cookies

Following is the syntax for setting cookies −

# Set a simple session cookie
cookies[:user_name] = "david" 
# Set a cookie that expires in 1 hour
cookies[:login] = { :value => "XJ12", :expires => Time.now + 3600}

Following is the syntax for reading cookies −

cookies[:user_name]  # => "david"
cookies.size         # => 2 

Following is the syntax for deleting cookies −

cookies.delete :user_name

The option symbols for setting cookies are as follows −

• value − The cookie’s value or list of values (as an array).

• path − The path for which this cookie applies. Defaults to the root of the application.

• domain − The domain for which this cookie applies.

• expires − The time at which this cookie expires, as a +Time+ object.

• secure − Whether this cookie is a secure cookie or not (default to false). Secure cookies are only transmitted to HTTPS servers.