# Session doesn't seem to store anything **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [August 3, 2007, 3:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-doesnt-seem-to-store-anything/111178 "2007-08-03T15:39:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![taro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/df705f/32.png) [@taro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/taro)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2007, 3:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-doesnt-seem-to-store-anything/111178/1 "2007-08-03T15:39:12Z")
I’m going to first frankly admit that this is the first web application I’m attempting to make for the first since the depot project in Agile Web D. with Ruby on Rails, and already, I’m lost. Anyway, according to my debug window I quickly made in the view files, I can easily tell the sessions doesn’t seem to hold anything. Every time I change to another controller link, the session either disappear, or erase itself, then fill itself up with the values the controller said to fill. I used the Database version of sessions (session\_store=:active\_record\_store) (I also don’t know a thing about MySQL. I needed the sessions to expire within a certain time limit). To wrap up the things that could possibly be the problem: 1. Do I need to enable the session in the controller? I thought Rails did that for me by default. 2. Do I need to create a separate column for each hash value the session is going to store? 3. Did I initialize the session wrong? How can I check? I first typed in the command line, “rake db:sessions:create”, then “rake db:migrate”, so the table should be there… 4. Where can I learn a little bit about MySQL? I’m a little intimidated by their homepage, yet I need to find a way to create a sweeper for the session table. 5. If none of these answers solves the problem, what may be another solution to it? Thanks for the help! ---
**Author:** ![taro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/df705f/32.png) [@taro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/taro)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2007, 5:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-doesnt-seem-to-store-anything/111178/2 "2007-08-03T17:00:22Z")
OK, I’ll try that. Many thanks! Out of curiosity, what does :session\_key do? Is it something like a security thing for sessions or something? ---
**Author:** ![taro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/df705f/32.png) [@taro](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/taro)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2007, 4:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-doesnt-seem-to-store-anything/111178/3 "2007-08-03T16:21:18Z")
On 03 Aug 2007, at 15:38, Taro wrote: > 1. Do I need to enable the session in the controller? I thought Rails > did that for me by default. Just comment out the :session\_key line in the application controller and see if that solves it. > 1. Do I need to create a separate column for each hash value the > session is going to store? No > 1. Did I initialize the session wrong? How can I check? I first > typed in the command line, “rake db:sessions:create”, then “rake > db:migrate”, so the table should be there… Make sure you set the session store to active\_record\_store > 1. Where can I learn a little bit about MySQL? I’m a little > intimidated by their homepage, yet I need to find a way to create a > sweeper for the session table. The easiest way to do it, is pick out a method that’s going to be called on regular occasions (such as the login method) and do the session cleanup there (as long as you don’t have thousands of concurrent requests, the cleanup won’t slow down the site): Put this in environment.rb (at the bottom) # Method for cleaning up stale sessions class SessionCleanup def self.cleanup CGI::Session::ActiveRecordStore::Session.destroy\_all( [‘updated\_at \< ?’, 8.hours.ago] ) end end Then in your login method: def login SessionCleanup.cleanup … end Best regards Peter De Berdt