Catalyst::Plugin::Session::PerUser(3)

NAME
Catalyst::Plugin::Session::PerUser - Per user sessions (instead of per browser sessions).

SYNOPSIS
        use Catalyst qw/
                Session
                Authentication
                Authentication::Store::Foo
                Session::PerUser
        /;

        sub action : Local {
                my ( $self, $c ) = @_;
                $c->user_session->{foo} = "bar";
        }

DESCRIPTION
This plugin allows you to write e.g. shopping cart code which should behave well for guests as well as permanent users.

The basic idea is both logged in and not logged in users can get the same benefits from sessions where it doesn't matter, but that logged in users can keep their sessions accross logins, and will even get the data they added/changed assimilated to their permanent account if they made the changes as guests and then logged in.

This is probably most useful for e-commerce sites, where the shopping cart is typically used before login, and should be equally accessible to both guests and logged in users.

STORING SESSION DATA
This module can store session data in two ways:

  Within the User
If "$c->user->supports("session_data")" then "$c->user->get_session_data" and "$c->user->store_session_data($data)" are used to access and store the per-user session hash reference.

This is useful for Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication::Store implementations that rely on a database or another fast, extensible format.

  Within the Session Store
If the user does not support the "session_data" feature, the Catalyst::Plugin::Session::Store plugin in use will be used to save the session data instead.

The session ID used to save this data is set by "user_session_sid".

Note that this method could potentially have security issues if you override the default "user_session_sid" or "validate_session_id" in Catalyst::Plugin::Session. See "CAVEATS" for details.

METHODS

user_session
    If no user is logged in, returns "$c->session".

    If a user is logged in, and "$user->supports("session_data")" it will return "$c->user->get_session_data". Otherwise it will return data from the normal session store, using "user_session_sid" as a session ID.

INTERNAL METHODS

merge_session_to_user
    Uses Hash::Merge to merge the browser session into the user session, omitting the special keys from the browser session.

    Should be overloaded to e.g. merge shopping cart items more intelligently.

user_session_sid
    By default returns

            "user:" . $c->user->id

EXTENDED METHODS

set_authenticated
    Calls "merge_session_to_user".

setup
finalize
logout

CONFIGURATION
        $c->config->{user_session} = {
        ...
    };

migrate
    Whether "$c->session" should be merged over "$c->user_session" on login. On by default.

merge_type
    Passed to "set_behavior" in Hash::Merge. Defaults to "RIGHT_PRECEDENT".

CAVEATS
If you override "validate_session_id" in Catalyst::Plugin::Session make sure its format DOES NOT ALLOW the format returned by "user_session_sid", or malicious users could potentially set their cookies to have sessions formatted like a string returned by "user_session_sid", and steal or destroy another user's session without authenticating. =back

SEE ALSO
Catalyst::Plugin::Authentication, Catalyst::Plugin::Session

AUTHORS
David Kamholz, "dkamholz@cpan.org"

Yuval Kogman, "nothingmuch@woobling.org"

Tomas Doran, "bobtfish@bobtfish.net"

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
        Copyright (c) 2005 the aforementioned authors. Some rights
        reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute
        it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

POD ERRORS
Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:

Around line 263:
    Expected text after =item, not a bullet