# Sessions

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/sessions/143802>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [July 22, 2008, 9:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/sessions/143802 "2008-07-22T21:46:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jturney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e99b99/32.png) [@jturney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jturney)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 9:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/sessions/143802/1 "2008-07-22T21:46:43Z")

</div>

If I set every user’s session[:user\_id] = user.id (model object.id) and  
saved it in activerecord table sessions, how would I extract everyone’s  
session[:user\_id] from the sessions table, so I can display who’s  
online?

Or is there a better way?

Thanks!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jturney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e99b99/32.png) [@jturney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jturney)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 10:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/sessions/143802/2 "2008-07-22T22:21:17Z")

</div>

On 22 Jul 2008, at 20:46, Justin To wrote:

> If I set every user’s session[:user\_id] = user.id (model object.id)  
> and  
> saved it in activerecord table sessions, how would I extract  
> everyone’s  
> session[:user\_id] from the sessions table, so I can display who’s  
> online?

with difficulty - the database just contains a Marshal.dump  
representation of the data, so you can’t query for it.  
You’d probably be better off just updating the users table with a  
‘last\_seen\_at’ timestamp. Or add a user\_id column to the sessions  
table (access it via session.model if i recall correctly).

Fred

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jturney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e99b99/32.png) [@jturney](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jturney)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 10:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/sessions/143802/3 "2008-07-22T22:34:37Z")

</div>

Sounds good Fred, that was my thought initially, thought there might be  
a more elegant way to implement it.

Thanks!!