# Newbie Session Discussion: Expiration and Clean Up NO CRONS **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [March 13, 2008, 6:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-session-discussion-expiration-and-clean-up-no-crons/131839 "2008-03-13T18:42:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Baz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/c4cdca/32.png) [@Baz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Baz)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2008, 6:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-session-discussion-expiration-and-clean-up-no-crons/131839/1 "2008-03-13T18:42:59Z")
Please forgive this discussion, but I’m not sure where to find what I’m looking for. I’m coming for a PHP background, where I’ve only ever used sessions for very simple storage (serializing when I need a lil’ more structure). Also I’ve been using the PHP sessions, which PHP is responsible for cleaning up. After reading Agile Web D. Development, they made some suggestions: - Don’t store data in the session, but have a separate structure that you reference with the session ID - Store sessions in the database. This poses some questions: - Can you implement some sort of session cleaning solely through Ruby without the need for a CRON job? - With this clean up (or even with a cron job) how does one handle the associated data in the database? How do we prevent these from being orphaned, since their session is now gone. Eg. in the book, I think they were talking about cart information. If you had each cart stored in the database and referenced by a session id, how do we ensure that that cart gets deleted when the user’s session expires or is cleaned? - How does Rails 2.0 and the default Cookie based session storage help/hurt the above? I take it there’s no cleanup? Still, how do we clean the associated data? Any help would be much appreciated. Please bare with the ignorance. ## ThanX in advance guys. Baz L Web D. 2.0 > **[Web Development 2.0: Web Design, ASP.NET Core, CakePHP, Javascript](https://www.webdevelopment2.com/)** > > Quick and Dirty Web Development ---
**Author:** ![Baz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/c4cdca/32.png) [@Baz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Baz)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2008, 10:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-session-discussion-expiration-and-clean-up-no-crons/131839/2 "2008-03-14T22:22:55Z")
Please forgive this discussion, but I’m not sure where to find what I’m looking for. I’m coming for a PHP background, where I’ve only ever used sessions for very simple storage (serializing when I need a lil’ more structure). Also I’ve been using the PHP sessions, which PHP is responsible for cleaning up. After reading Agile Web D. Development, they made some suggestions: - Don’t store data in the session, but have a separate structure that you reference with the session ID - Store sessions in the database. This poses some questions: - Can you implement some sort of session cleaning solely through Ruby without the need for a CRON job? - With this clean up (or even with a cron job) how does one handle the associated data in the database? How do we prevent these from being orphaned, since their session is now gone. Eg. in the book, I think they were talking about cart information. If you had each cart stored in the database and referenced by a session id, how do we ensure that that cart gets deleted when the user’s session expires or is cleaned? - How does Rails 2.0 and the default Cookie based session storage help/hurt the above? I take it there’s no cleanup? Still, how do we clean the associated data? Any help would be much appreciated. Please bare with the ignorance. ## ThanX in advance guys. Baz L Web D. 2.0 [http://WebDevelopment2.com/](http://WebDevelopment2.com/) [http://webdevelopment2.com/](http://webdevelopment2.com/)