Tutorials: Working with HTTP Sessions

├─ Configuring Session Creation
└─ Reading and Writing to Session

Configuring Session Creation

Even though the whole process can work without any further intervention, framework allows you to fine tune session creation via <session> tag @ stdout.xml. Among its attributes most important for developers are:

handler: user-defined session handler class name (including namespace or subfolder) implementing \SessionHandlerInterface.
Example: "Lucinda\Project\DAO\NoSQLSessionHandler"
auto_start: signals session to be started automatically for every request.
Value: "1"

If your project is not RESTful and it features authentication & authorization, setting auto_start attribute is required.

Load Balancing

If your project will be load balanced on multiple web servers, setting handler attribute is required. Latter must point to a SessionHandlerInterface implementation and framework comes by default with:

Lucinda\Project\DAO\NoSQLSessionHandler: binds with NoSQL Data Access API to handle sessions into a key-value store DB
Lucinda\Project\DAO\SQLSessionHandler: binds with SQL Data Access API to handle sessions into a SQL DB (eg: MySQL)
Requires "sessions" table created beforehand. Structure @ MySQL:
CREATE TABLE sessions ( id VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL, value BLOB NOT NULL, date TIMESTAMP NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, expires INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, PRIMARY KEY(id), KEY(expires) ) Engine=INNODB

Reading and Writing to Session

Framework uses STDOUT MVC API to encapsulate all session operations via Lucinda\STDOUT\Session. Latter defines following methods relevant for developers:

start(): starts session, based on <session> settings if present. Called automatically if auto_start is set!
isStarted(): checks if session is started
set(KEY, VALUE): sets session parameter by key and value
get(KEY): gets value of session parameter by key
contains(KEY): checks if parameter exists in session by key
remove(KEY): removes session parameter by key
destroy(): destroys session, clearing of all parameters.

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