Sessions, Cookies, and Flashes

sessions.md

Sessions, Cookies, and Flashes

1. If we didn't have cookies and sessions, what would happen?

• We wouldn't be able to persist anything that didn't exist in our database. We'd be at the mercy of the stateless model

1. What is a cookie?

• An insecure hash like object that persists data across sessions.

1. What's the difference between a cookie and a session?

• A session's data is serialized making it more difficult to manipulate its contents

1. What's serialization and how does it come into play with sessions?

• Serialization protects the contents of a session object. It requires a special key to deserialize it. The key is held by the Rails app.

1. Why would we want to store a user id in a session?

• Because if it was in a cookie a user could modify their id, perhaps to give themselves access to admin privileges.

1. What is a flash? How long does a flash have before it expires?

• A flash is a hash like object that can pass messages to hte client. It expires every time it is accessed.

1. What syntax would I use to add a user_id key and value to the session?

• session[:user_id] = 12

1. What does "HTTP is stateless" mean?

• The protocol does not persist data, meaning it has no knowledge of previous requests.