bottle_session

bottle_session is a simple session module for the Bottle framework. Some other projects have session managers for Bottle, but I felt a very simple session was in the spirit of the Bottle framework.

The sever-side session is referenced with a simple cookie that can be stored in two selectable modes: memory only or a pickled server-side cache file.

Currently session clean-up on the pickled type only happens when a client gracefully performs a logout. The memory session is cleaned when its data stucture is deallocated. I will change this to fully follow the expiry on the client-side-cookie.

Caveat

Although a somewhat rare occurence, the session is not thread safe if two different processes are associating themselves with the same session.

Session object class init(params) - creates a session object

params:

 secret - required secret for encrypting data
 sessions_dir - the directory to store the sessions in (defaults to './sessions')
 cookie_name - the name of the cookie to reference the session (defaults to 'bsession')
 mode - 'memory', 'file' (defaults to 'memory')
 days - the number of days to keep the session in memory (defaults to 30)

Example usage -- using session

at the top of your app.py file include the line

include bottle_session
session = bottle_session.Session('your-secret')

in each view function, include similar code that connects, and keeps the session data organize with the dictionary session.data.

@app.route('/somefunc')
def some_func():
    session.connect() # connect the session
    # manipulate the session.data dictionary
    session.data['user'] = 'joe'
    session.data['age'] = '30'
    # note that when 'file' mode is used
    # it is not saved until session.save() is called
    # and is optional (inert) if you are using 'memory' mode
    session.save()
    ...

Alternatively, you could put a session connect in the before_request and save the session in the after_request. Though it is somewhat inefficient to do this.

@app.before_request
def before_request():
    session.connect()
app.add_hook('before_request', before_request)
    
@app.after_request
def after_request():
    session.save()
app.add_hook('after_request', after_request)

Then when the user's session is done, you can purge or clear the session with session.purge() or session.clear() both are equivalent.

@app.route('/logout')
def logout():
    session.connect()
    session.purge()

Acknowlegements

Thanks to Marcel Helkamp and the Bottle community for developing the Bottle Framework.