Disable sessions for API

Rails
1

So I just noticed that rails went on faithfully creating new sessions
for each API request. I’d like to stop this behavior, but don’t quite
know how.

I am using edge with REST routes (api.resources). Is there something I
can pass from there to turn off sessions for these accessess?

I suspect it will take the form of:
session :off, :if => something

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Jake

2

In your controller, put:

session :disabled => true

3

Bruno C. wrote:

In your controller, put:

session :disabled => true

That would disable sessions for ALL requests to the controller. I only
want to disable sessions for API communication.

With the RESTful stuff, the API and standard HTML rendering are all
rolled up into the same controllers and actions, so something else needs
to be done.

Jake

4

Bruno C. wrote:

I think I found what you want. From the doc:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/SessionManagement/ClassMethods.html#M000102

See the last example with :if and Proc.
params[:format] will give you the requested format, you can probably
play with it to disable session.

Yes, I mentioned this in my initial post. I don’t understand, however,
what is passed into that Proc.

You’re saying I could do:
:if Proc.new {|req| req.params[:format] }

What class is “req” ? I’d like to look it up to see what method I can
use on it.

Jake

5

I think I found what you want. From the doc:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/SessionManagement/ClassMethods.html#M000102

See the last example with :if and Proc.
params[:format] will give you the requested format, you can probably
play with it to disable session.

6

Rohith R. wrote:

Hey Jake,

I would assume that the proc just has to return true or false indicating
whether or not to create a new session.

so something along the lines of

session :off, :if => Proc.new {|r| r.parameters[:format] == :api}

or something along those lines.

HTH

That seems reasonable, but I’m still stuck on “r”. What class is it?
Where is it created? How does one put :format into the parameters hash?
Can this be done from routes.rb ?

Maybe this is incredibly simple, but it’s just not clear to me.

7

Hey Jake,

I would assume that the proc just has to return true or false indicating
whether or not to create a new session.

so something along the lines of

session :off, :if => Proc.new {|r| r.parameters[:format] == :api}

or something along those lines.

HTH

8

On Nov 20, 2006, at 9:12 AM, Jake J. wrote:

That seems reasonable, but I’m still stuck on “r”. What class is it?
Where is it created? How does one put :format into the parameters
hash?
Can this be done from routes.rb ?

Maybe this is incredibly simple, but it’s just not clear to me.

It’s the request object. One of these:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/
AbstractRequest.html

If you’re using the RESTful routes in edge rails, a request of posts/
1.api will set :format to ‘api’ (as in the previous e-mail’s
example). The route looks like this:

GET /posts/:id.:format/
{:controller=>“posts”, :action=>“show”}

It all depends on how you want your API to be accessed. It’s up to you.

For more session info, see here:
irb Mix Tape — err.the_blog

–
Chris W.

9

Chris W. wrote:

On Nov 20, 2006, at 9:12 AM, Jake J. wrote:
If you’re using the RESTful routes in edge rails, a request of posts/
1.api will set :format to ‘api’ (as in the previous e-mail’s
example). The route looks like this:

GET /posts/:id.:format/
{:controller=>“posts”, :action=>“show”}

Hm. Ok. Getting closer.

For the sake of posterity, I have my API routes setup to authenticate by
a token:

map.with_options :path_prefix => “/api/:api_token” do |api|
api.resources :person
api.resources :company
…
end

So my session disabling stuff is then:

session :off, :if => Proc.new {|req|
!req.parameters[:api_token].nil?}

Thanks for all the help, gents. I think things are working now.

Jake