Sessions and HTTPS

Rails
1

Hi all,

I’m having a problem and I don’t even know it it is fixable, let along
how to
fix it.

I have a section of my site which redirects to an HTTPS connection to a
different subdomain, so that users can safely make a payment. The
redirection
works fine, and the payment process runs as expected, but when the user
returns
to an http:// connection they are logged out. It seems that the session
cookie
isn’t being sent.

The situation is like this:

protocol: HTTP -> HTTPS -> HTTP
session: OLD -> OLD -> NEW

Now, I have my cookies set up to persist across subdomains, and that
works
across the rest of the site, however as I say on returning from an https
connection, no cookie is sent by the browser and therefore a new session
is
created.

Is there some way I can set up cookies to persist across HTTPS and
back?
What’s surprising is that there’s no problem with the switch TO HTTPS

Thanks,
Gareth

2

Gareth A. wrote:

isn’t being sent.

Is there some way I can set up cookies to persist across HTTPS and back?
What’s surprising is that there’s no problem with the switch TO HTTPS

I have a similar setup but am not seeing this problem. How are you
redirecting
from HTTPS to HTTP? Are you forcing HTTP using mod_rewrite?

Long

3

Hi Gareth -

Try this:
ActionController::CgiRequest::DEFAULT_SESSION_OPTIONS.update(
:session_domain => ‘.example.com’)

It will maintain your session across anything with ‘.example.com’ .

Cheers
Starr

4

Starr wrote:

Hi Gareth -

Try this:
ActionController::CgiRequest::DEFAULT_SESSION_OPTIONS.update(
:session_domain => ‘.example.com’)

It will maintain your session across anything with ‘.example.com’ .

I will add that I’d place the code-snippet in environment.rb (there may
be other suitable
locations) and only enable for ‘production’. If you enable in
development (WEBrick)
you will quickly find sessions unusable.

Long

5

Starr wrote:

That’s a good heads up, Long. - Thanks

You’re welcome. The issue might come up later so I’d though I should
mention it.

Cheers,

Long

6

One more thing - looking at the rails wikki, it seems as if some people
can’t get it to work without omitting the ‘.’ from the domain name.

7

That’s a good heads up, Long. - Thanks

Starr