Rails - Jul 2005 - Yet Another Newbie Question ... about storing stuff in sessions

Hi folks,

sorry for annoying you with such idiot questions, but i tried to
google for that stuff 5 hours and for some reason (probably stupidity)
I could not get it.
So here is the question:

I have a still small rails app with some users and settings etc. which
is doing fine. Untill now everything that I''ve done with it was stored
in some database tables.
Now I need the users to fill out a form with data, which I don''t want
to store in the database. This data is supposed to be some kind of
query for a ruby clusterer which is yet not implemented. A user should
be able to submit many different requests per session

The form has some text fields like:
string1, string2, string3
I have  model requst.rb:

class Request < ActiveRecord::Base
	attr_reader :settings
	belongs_to :user
end

..and a RequestController:

class RequestController < ApplicationController
	before_filter :login_required
	
	#
	private 
	def new
		Request.new 
		end 
	end.

How can I store (and overwrite the next time)  the submitted form
values in the session? Is the session the right place for holding such
data?

best regards

Ana

As far as manipulating session data, it''s as easy as:

     @session[:mydata] = ''some data here''

And then on some other random page you could do:

     Hey look this is an html page, the session has
     <%=h @session[:mydata] %>

See the RubyOnRails wiki at:

     http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/UnderstandingSessions

@session can be indexed using strings, symbols, or whatever

As far as your specific data storage needs, consider the differences
between the following:

   1. Storage in a database
       * Persists forever
       * More resource-intensive than storage in memory for store/ 
retrieve
       * Less resource-intensive than storage in memory for large  
data sets.

   2. Storage in the client''s session
       * Can only be seen by the client
       * Disappears when the client''s cookie expires (assume a couple  
of hours)
       * Must be able to be Marshalled (no Procs)

   3. Storage in the application''s session
       * Viewable by the entire application
       * Unless managed, disappears when the server is restarted

I forget at the moment how to persist application-context state within
rails, but a few minutes on the RoR wiki should give you an answer, or
someone else might chime in :)

Cheers,
Michael Walker

On Jul 31, 2005, at 10:17 AM, Ana Kovatcheva wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> sorry for annoying you with such idiot questions, but i tried to
> google for that stuff 5 hours and for some reason (probably stupidity)
> I could not get it.
> So here is the question:
>
> I have a still small rails app with some users and settings etc. which
> is doing fine. Untill now everything that I''ve done with it was
stored
> in some database tables.
> Now I need the users to fill out a form with data, which I don''t
want
> to store in the database. This data is supposed to be some kind of
> query for a ruby clusterer which is yet not implemented. A user should
> be able to submit many different requests per session
>
> The form has some text fields like:
> string1, string2, string3
> I have  model requst.rb:
>
> class Request < ActiveRecord::Base
>     attr_reader :settings
>     belongs_to :user
> end
>
> ..and a RequestController:
>
> class RequestController < ApplicationController
>     before_filter :login_required
>
>     #
>     private
>     def new
>         Request.new
>         end
>     end.
>
> How can I store (and overwrite the next time)  the submitted form
> values in the session? Is the session the right place for holding such
> data?
>
> best regards
>
> Ana
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>