# Session Sweeping

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-sweeping/74864>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 28, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-sweeping/74864 "2006-02-28T18:05:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f14d63/32.png) [@adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adistarmid)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-sweeping/74864/1 "2006-02-28T18:05:48Z")

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Hi,

Anyone got some slick ideas on how to sweep an AR session store? I have  
a  
few ideas how I can do it, just want to see if there is an elegant  
solution  
that someone is already using.

Bob S.

[http://www.railtie.net/](http://www.railtie.net/)

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**Author:** ![adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f14d63/32.png) [@adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adistarmid)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 7:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-sweeping/74864/2 "2006-02-28T19:01:01Z")

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More elegant than the rake task?

rake purge\_sessions\_table # Drop and recreate the session table  
(much  
faster than ‘DELETE \* FROM sessions’)

-Steve  
[http://www.stevelongdo.com](http://www.stevelongdo.com)

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**Author:** ![adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f14d63/32.png) [@adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adistarmid)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 7:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-sweeping/74864/3 "2006-02-28T19:07:00Z")

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Steve L. wrote:

> More elegant than the rake task?
> 
> rake purge\_sessions\_table # Drop and recreate the session table  
> (much  
> faster than ‘DELETE \* FROM sessions’)
> 
> -Steve  
> [http://www.stevelongdo.com](http://www.stevelongdo.com)

That’s not a particularly nice way to do it for users that would prefer  
to keep their session data for a little while.

Isn’t it better to do a nightly sweep of sessions that are, say, 3 weeks  
old?

I keep login information (cookie) for up to 2 weeks, so I’ll probably  
just delete sessions after 16 days. But I’ll do it nightly to avoid a  
huge build-up. I have an SQL script that runs nightly to perform  
backups. I will probably just put the delete command in there unless  
there is some compelling reason to have Ruby do it.

Jake

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**Author:** ![adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f14d63/32.png) [@adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adistarmid)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 8:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-sweeping/74864/4 "2006-02-28T20:23:49Z")

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Here’s my trick.  
Actually make a session model in your app and leave it almost completly  
empty.

Add a simple method to the session model called sweep or whatever.

def self.sweep  
self.destroy\_all(:coditions =\> [“updated\_at \< ?”, 30.minutes.ago]  
end

Now, in order to run this (either through cron, windows scheduler,  
whatever)  
your command, from the rails app directory:  
ruby script/runner “Session.sweep”

And there ya go, that should do it for ya. Of course you can change the  
run  
time or session length to whatever you want. It has worked great for me.

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**Author:** ![adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f14d63/32.png) [@adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adistarmid)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 8:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-sweeping/74864/5 "2006-02-28T20:54:17Z")

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Cron is the way to go…I have a cron job that runs hourly on each of my  
rails sites.

It does different things based on the site, but one of those things is  
deleting sessions older than a few hours.

Maybe look into RailsCron as well. I just launch mine from good ol’  
cron.

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**Author:** ![adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f14d63/32.png) [@adistarmid](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/adistarmid)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2006, 9:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/session-sweeping/74864/6 "2006-02-28T21:09:35Z")

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The great things about RailsCron is that if you ever need to move  
your application, your  
cron job will move with you as well…

–  
– Tom M.