Share session between a Rails2 and Rails3 app

Question

I want to share the session between a Rails 2.3.14 app and a Rails 3.0.10 app by using the session cookie store.

I found an excellent blogpost that explains how to set that up: http://blog.kabisa.nl/2010/10/27/share-sessions-between-rails-2-and-rails-3-applications/

It all works fine up until the point where the issue is raised that Rails2 stores session keys as symbols, and Rails3 as strings. Also a patch has been supplied to fix this:

# lib/patches/cgi/session.rb
require 'cgi/session'

class CGI #:nodoc:
  class Session #:nodoc:
    def [](key)
      @data ||= @dbman.restore
      @data[key.to_s]
    end

    def []=(key, val)
      @write_lock ||= true
      @data ||= @dbman.restore
      @data[key.to_s] = val
    end
  end
end

The blog is from 2010, and it looks like this patch is longer working for a Rails2.3.14 app. I also read that CGI really deprecated, so I wonder if this patch is still the right way to resolve the issue.

Any suggestions how to make sure that both Rails2 and Rails3 use the same data type for session keys?

It should make no difference using Rails 2 or Rails 3, since cookies are stored as strings (text files) in the browser. It doesn't matter if you use a symbol or string to get/set the value. The serialization might have changed from 2 to 3. Can't you use as raw a method as possible? — Joost Baaij, Feb 22 '12 at 21:19

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 17 '12 at 11:42

module ActionController
  module Session
    class AbstractStore
      class SessionHash < Hash
        def [](key)
          load_for_read!
          super(key.to_s)
        end

        def []=(key, val)
          load_for_write!
          super(key.to_s, val)
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

or if you prefer modify 2.3.8, you can add this to config/initializers/session_store.rb

module ActionController::Session
  class AbstractStore
    class SessionHash < Hash
       def [](key)
         load! unless @loaded
         super(key.to_s)
       end

       def []=(key, value)
         load! unless @loaded
         super(key.to_s, value)
       end
    end
  end
end

Share session between a Rails2 and Rails3 app

1 Answers1