Setting session timeout in Rails 3

This seems simple: I am trying to get my rails Active Record session to timeout after 2 minutes. So after two minutes I want my users to have to re-login.

I'm just running rails server (i.e. WebBrick) on my local dev machine.

I know this is something to do with the following code in config/initalizers/session_store.rb, but I don't think I have quite nailed it:

CodedOn::Application.config.session_store :active_record_store

CodedOn::Application.configure do
    config.action_controller.session = {:expire_after => 2.minutes}
end

This doesn't seem to work, or at least my session doesn't appear to timeout. I can't find much about the Rails 3 way to do this as I know things have changed from Rails 2.x.

Can some one help me out?

I think you will have to do this manually since the active record store does not implement the expire_after option. So within your (I assume) before filter, you should do this:

def authenticate
  if session[:logged_in]
    reset_session if session[:last_seen] < 2.minutes.ago
    session[:last_seen] = Time.now
  else
    ... authenticate
    session[:last_seen] = Time.now
  end
end

Obviously, this is not complete, but it should give you the basic idea.

UPDATE:

It seems that the functionality IS present in rails since version 2.3. I found the relevant code here. This is AbstractStore which should serve as base class for all derived ones. So, as dadooda suggests, the following should work:

Some::Application.config.session_store :active_record_store, {
  expire_after: 24.hours,
}

I did this in simple way you can try this:

In your config/initializers/session_store.rb just do this:

Yourapp::Application.config.session_store :cookie_store, 
                                             :key => "_yourapp_session",
                                             :expire_after => 2.minutes

This is working for me finely, hope works for you also.

You have to do it manually. Here's an example of creating a class method for ActiveRecord sessions. You can use Rufus-Scheduler and/or DelayedJob to regularly call this.

class Session < ActiveRecord::Base
  def self.sweep(time = 1.hour)
    if time.is_a?(String)
      time = time.split.inject { |count, unit| count.to_i.send(unit) }
    end

    delete_all "updated_at < '#{time.ago.to_s(:db)}' OR created_at < '#{2.days.ago.to_s(:db)}'"
  end
end

More background on why it's important: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html#session-expiry

mosch says:

I think you will have to do this manually since the active record store does not implement the expire_after option.

It seems it's no longer this way. :expire_after worked for me in Rails 3.2.11:

Some::Application.config.session_store :active_record_store, {
  key: "some_session_id",
  domain: ".isp.com",
  expire_after: 24.hours,
}

The cookie auto-prolongs after every request towards the app. The session persists through browser exits.

I did the above trick to "globalize" the session across domain for a simple SSO functionality, seems to work so far.

The expiration time.

MAX_SESSION_TIME = 60 * 60

before_filter :prepare_session

def prepare_session

   if !session[:expiry_time].nil? and session[:expiry_time] < Time.now
      # Session has expired. Clear the current session.
      reset_session
   end

   # Assign a new expiry time, whether the session has expired or not.
   session[:expiry_time] = MAX_SESSION_TIME.seconds.from_now
   return true
end

Just add timeout_in method in your model and it should do the trick:

  def timeout_in
    2.minutes
  end