Here's a snippet from a recent NodeJS app with Express
app.use(cookieParser());
...
var session_secret = process.env.SESSION_SECRET;
app.use(session({
secret: session_secret,
store: new RedisStore({
port: 6379
}),
resave: true,
saveUninitialized: true
}));
/**
* Load current user from session.
*/
app.use(function (req, res, next) {
req.user = req.session.user;
/**
* Help troubleshoot cookies
*/
// if (app.get('env') === 'development') {
// console.log('Session ID: ', req.sessionID);
// console.log('Cookies: ', req.cookies);
// console.log(req.session.cookie);
// }
// if (app.get('env') === 'development') {
// console.log('Logged in user set as ', req.user);
// }
return next();
});
Uncommenting the troubleshooting middleware, yields the following debug info. Notice how the session ID is stored by way as part of the cookie sid. The format used is [sid].[signature].
Session ID: rKZiUCm_udlh7klVw8jpkS3X2rpZn68T
Cookies: { 'connect.sid': 's:rKZiUCm_udlh7klVw8jpkS3X2rpZn68T.279rfeYyrnlI4gF9uz2rXoxH4QBK5JZ9ZPK
3rtnnOXw' }
{ path: '/',
_expires: false,
originalMaxAge: false,
httpOnly: true }
However, the cookie itself, does not contain much about the session itself. For this, we need to break out redis-cli for some further digging
127.0.0.1:6379> INFO keyspace
# Keyspace
db0:keys=1,expires=1,avg_ttl=86377798
127.0.0.1:6379> KEYS *
1) "sess:3bTHIYVodfDk7QmTH1IgGbE2qvo3fO9U"
127.0.0.1:6379> GET "sess:3bTHIYVodfDk7QmTH1IgGbE2qvo3fO9U"
"{\"cookie\":{\"originalMaxAge\":false,\"expires\":false,\"httpOnly\":true,\"path\":\"/\"},\"flash\":{},\"passport\":{\"user\":1},\"user\":{\"id\":1,\"email\":\"[email protected]\",\"password\":\"$2a$10$/jTo.5N5Ml/sB/XKHhdUOuYWVDWB5PCAjIfFLoiKwUKsUrT5uDuse\",\"mobile\":\"0777123999\",\"created_at\":\"2016-11-30T16:30:15.000Z\"}}"
Interestingly enough, the session is stored as a Redis key with the format sess:[sid] and the value is the JSON.stringify()'ed version of the session contents. Here's the pretty version
{
"cookie": {
"originalMaxAge": false,
"expires": false,
"httpOnly": true,
"path": "/"
},
"flash": {},
"passport": {
"user": 1
},
"user": {
"id": 1,
"email": "[email protected]",
"password": "$2a$10$/jTo.5N5Ml/sB/XKHhdUOuYWVDWB5PCAjIfFLoiKwUKsUrT5uDuse",
"mobile": "0777123999",
"created_at": "2016-11-30T16:30:15.000Z"
}
}