Rails - Apr 2011 - questions about cookies when bridging together two rails apps

Hey all,

I am looking through this example Rails app where a user session is
stored in cookie so user signs up in one rails app and navigates to
another while still being signed in as unique user. I come across this
line of code where I don''t understand where some of these methods are
coming from:

    @session = Session.create!(:user => @user)
    cookies[:session_token] = {:value => @session.token, :domain =>
Settings.session_token_domain}

1) I look in Session class and there is no create! class method. Yet it
works and doesn''t throw an exception.

I do understand when that create! method is called, the constructor is
initialized first and generates a random number and assigns it to the
token property (self.token) of the specific instance. And then stores
the instance to the @session instance variable.

 2) I did a global search of app and found no property or method called
"session_token_domain", although there is a Session class but
session_token_domain is not declared anywhere in it. The only other
location is in settings.yml, which has something like this:

production:
  <<: *default_settings
  session_token_domain: xxxxx

So I''m not sure why this doesn''t throw an exception either.

3) Finally I see that Rails supports a hash called cookies that can pass
strings or symbols. Here a key is created and a value which contains
subhashes is passed into it. So we store a unique session token for
user. What value does this add rather than just assigning the user id in
the sessions hash which is actually done in the same method:

session[:user_id] = @user.id

Why store them both?

Thanks for response

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On Apr 29, 3:04 am, John Merlino
<li...-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I am looking through this example Rails app where a user session is
> stored in cookie so user signs up in one rails app and navigates to
> another while still being signed in as unique user. I come across this
> line of code where I don''t understand where some of these methods
are
> coming from:
>
>     @session = Session.create!(:user => @user)
>     cookies[:session_token] = {:value => @session.token, :domain =>
> Settings.session_token_domain}
>
> 1) I look in Session class and there is no create! class method. Yet it
> works and doesn''t throw an exception.
>
With so little context it is hard to say.
> I do understand when that create! method is called, the constructor is
> initialized first and generates a random number and assigns it to the
> token property (self.token) of the specific instance. And then stores
> the instance to the @session instance variable.
>
>  2) I did a global search of app and found no property or method called
> "session_token_domain", although there is a Session class but
> session_token_domain is not declared anywhere in it. The only other
> location is in settings.yml, which has something like this:
>
Again, we know nothing about your app. At a wild guess, maybe the
settings class reads settings.yml and created methods for all the
attributes defined in there.

Fred
> production:
>   <<: *default_settings
>   session_token_domain: xxxxx
>
> So I''m not sure why this doesn''t throw an exception
either.
>
> 3) Finally I see that Rails supports a hash called cookies that can pass
> strings or symbols. Here a key is created and a value which contains
> subhashes is passed into it. So we store a unique session token for
> user. What value does this add rather than just assigning the user id in
> the sessions hash which is actually done in the same method:
>
> session[:user_id] = @user.id
>
> Why store them both?
>
> Thanks for response
>
> --
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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Frederick Cheung wrote in post #995797:
> On Apr 29, 3:04am, John Merlino
<li...-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Settings.session_token_domain}
>>
>> 1) I look in Session class and there is no create! class method. Yet it
>> works and doesn''t throw an exception.
>>
>
> With so little context it is hard to say.
It inherits from ActiveRecord and I know ActiveRecord doesn''t contain a
create! method. The only possibility could be then a gem that works as a 
singleton. But what I would love to do is something like: logger.info 
Session.create! and then get output that says that this method is 
defined in such and such class, kind of like a callstack. But of course 
logger.info or logger.error just tells you what the value holds, not 
where it was declared and initialized.

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On Apr 29, 10:17 pm, John Merlino
<li...-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Frederick Cheung wrote in post #995797:
>
> > On Apr 29, 3:04am, John Merlino
<li...-fsXkhYbjdPsEEoCn2XhGlw@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> >> Settings.session_token_domain}
>
> >> 1) I look in Session class and there is no create! class method.
Yet it
> >> works and doesn''t throw an exception.
>
> > With so little context it is hard to say.
>
> It inherits from ActiveRecord and I know ActiveRecord doesn''t
contain a
> create! method.
Wrongo.
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Validations/ClassMethods.html#method-i-create-21
> The only possibility could be then a gem that works as a
> singleton. But what I would love to do is something like: logger.info
> Session.create! and then get output that says that this method is
> defined in such and such class, kind of like a callstack. But of course
> logger.info or logger.error just tells you what the value holds, not
> where it was declared and initialized.
You could step into it with the debugger.

Fred
>
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> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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