express-pg-session

A customizable PostgreSQL session store for Connect / Express

Forked from connect-pg-simple

Most of the code is borrowed from connect-pg-simple

Main change

The only real change is the ability to customize the column names in your session tables. This can be done by supplying a columns option to pgSession. This is a frequent requirement in our workflow and so we made this change.

let columnNames = {
  session_id: 'sid',
  session_data: 'sess',
  expire: 'expires_at'
}
 
let session = new pgSession({
  pool : pgPool,                // Connection pool
  tableName : 'user_sessions',  // Alternate table name
  columns: columnNames          // Alternate column names
})

Installation

npm install express-pg-session

Once npm installed the module, you need to create the session table in your database. For that you can use the table.sql file provided with the module:

psql mydatabase < node_modules/connect-pg-simple/table.sql

Or simply play the file via a GUI, like the pgAdminIII queries tool.

Usage

Examples are based on Express 4.

Simple example:

var session = require('express-session');
 
app.use(session({
  store: new (require('express-pg-session')(session))(),
  secret: process.env.FOO_COOKIE_SECRET,
  resave: false,
  cookie: { maxAge: 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 } // 30 days
}));

Advanced example showing some custom options:

var pg = require('pg')
  , session = require('express-session')
  , pgSession = require('express-pg-session')(session);
 
var pgPool = new pg.Pool({
    // Insert pool options here
});
 
app.use(session({
  store: new pgSession({
    pool : pgPool,                // Connection pool
    tableName : 'user_sessions'   // Use another table-name than the default "session" one
  }),
  secret: process.env.FOO_COOKIE_SECRET,
  resave: false,
  cookie: { maxAge: 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 } // 30 days
}));

Express 3 (and similar for Connect):

var express = require('express');
 
app.use(session({
  store: new (require('express-pg-session')(express.session))(),
  secret: process.env.FOO_COOKIE_SECRET,
  cookie: { maxAge: 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 } // 30 days
}));

Advanced options

• pool - Recommended. Connection pool object (compatible with pg.Pool) for the underlying database module. The conString option is ignored if this option is specified.
• pgPromise - Existing instance of pg-promise to be used for DB communications. The conString option is ignored if this option is specified.
• conString - If you don't specify a pool object, use this option or conObject to specify a PostgreSQL connection string and this module will create a new pool for you. If the connection string is in the DATABASE_URL environment variable (as you do by default on eg. Heroku) – then this module fallback to that if this option is not specified.
• conObject - If you don't specify a pool object, use this option or conString to specify a PostgreSQL Pool connection object and this module will create a new pool for you.
• ttl - the time to live for the session in the database – specified in seconds. Defaults to the cookie maxAge if the cookie has a maxAge defined and otherwise defaults to one day.
• schemaName - if your session table is in another Postgres schema than the default (it normally isn't), then you can specify that here.
• tableName - if your session table is named something else than session, then you can specify that here.
• pruneSessionInterval - sets the delay in seconds at which expired sessions are pruned from the database. Default is 60 seconds. If set to false no automatic pruning will happen. Automatic pruning weill happen pruneSessionInterval seconds after the last pruning – manual or automatic.
• errorLog – the method used to log errors in those cases where an error can't be returned to a callback. Defaults to console.error(), but can be useful to override if one eg. uses Bunyan for logging.

Useful methods

• close() – if this module used its own database module to connect to Postgres, then this will shut that connection down to allow a graceful shutdown.
• pruneSessions([callback(err)]) – will prune old sessions. Only really needed to be called if pruneSessionInterval has been set to false – which can be useful if one wants improved control of the pruning.