Express.Session isn't obvious

[dzirg44]

Hi @benawad ! Thank you for your great videos.
Today I faced with one problem here

lireddit/server/src/types.ts

Line 7 in 2801126

req: Request & { session: Express.Session };

as I can see this type we get from express-session even though you tried to import it from express and it didn't work.
when I try to write something like Express.Session I get the error

Namespace 'global.Express' has no exported member 'Session'

i tried to solve it via, but I am not good at typescript ;)

import { Connection, EntityManager, IDatabaseDriver } from "@mikro-orm/core";
import { Request, Response } from "express";

export type MyContext = {
  em: EntityManager<IDatabaseDriver<Connection>>;
  req: Request & { session: Request };
  res: Response;
};

in server/src/types.ts
and

req.session.sessionID = user.id.toString();

in the server/src/resolvers/user.ts

versions:

{
    "express": "^4.17.1",
    "express-session": "^1.17.1",
}

sorry in advance if I just didn't understand or miss something .

[benawad]

Looks like the session type has been removed from express, you could probably just do:

Request & { session: { userId: string } };

[c2peng]

Thanks so much for asking this. Spent 6+ hrs trying to figure out what's happening.

[girishk21]

I found this to be working!

in /server/index.d.ts

import { User } from './src/entities/User';

declare global {
  namespace Express {
    interface Session {
      userid?: number;
    }
  }
}

and add this to "files": [] attribute of tsconfig.json.

Express.Session is now available in /server/src/types.ts 🎉

is it okay to play with declaration merging or it's not advisable to do so?

[RiahiKarim]

@dzirg44 This should work.

import { Request, Response } from 'express';
import { Session, SessionData } from 'express-session';

export type MyContext = {
  req: Request & {
    session: Session & Partial<SessionData> & { userId?: number };
  };
  res: Response;
};

[Sparklytical]

I did something like this -

interface SessionData {
  userId: number;
}

export type Context = {
  req: Request & { session: SessionData };
};

[uV3301]

@dzirg44 This should work.

import { Request, Response } from 'express';
import { Session, SessionData } from 'express-session';

export type MyContext = {
  req: Request & {
    session: Session & Partial<SessionData> & { userId?: number };
  };
  res: Response;
};

This worked fine. Thanks @dzirg44

[MananDesai54]

@dzirg44 This should work.

import { Request, Response } from 'express';
import { Session, SessionData } from 'express-session';

export type MyContext = {
  req: Request & {
    session: Session & Partial<SessionData> & { userId?: number };
  };
  res: Response;
};

Thank you, it worked

[MananDesai54]

Looks like the session type has been removed from express, you could probably just do:

Request & { session: { userId: string } };

Your videos are on the next level, thank you so much for all of this

[CarlosBalladares]

This solves too

import session from "express-session";
...
Request & { session: session.Session & { userId?: number } };

[ahmedrowaihi]

import session from "express-session";
declare module "express-session" {
interface SessionData {
userId?: number;
}
}

export type MyContext = {
req: Request & { session: session.Session & Partial<session.SessionData> };
res: Response;
redis: Redis;
usersLoader: ReturnType;
updootLoader: ReturnType;
};

[BookmDan]

I have tried several methods and for whatever reason, there is not a cookie being saved...

[benawad]

@BookmDan this is all my advice for debugging cookies: https://benawad.com/cookie

[BookmDan]

Thank you @benawad That was helpful. Actually, because we are incorporating with RedisStore would that be considered a 3rd Party Cookie? Asking for a friend.

[BookmDan]

This is the error message that I am seeing:

[Tenezill]

I have tried several methods and for whatever reason, there is not a cookie being saved...

hey, the thing that solved the problem for me was "removing" secure while in development.
like this:

app.use(
    session({
      name: "qid",
      store: new RedisStore({
        client: redisClient,
        disableTouch: true,
      }),
      cookie: {
        maxAge: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 * 1, // 10 years
        httpOnly: true,
        sameSite: "lax", // csrf
        // secure: __prod__, // cookie only works in https
      },
      saveUninitialized: false,
      secret: "qowihho",
      resave: false,
    })
  );

[kyawthura-gg]

I have tried several methods and for whatever reason, there is not a cookie being saved...

I have solved this by setting cors in apollo server.

apolloServer.applyMiddleware({
app,
cors: {
credentials: true,
},
});

[matthew-d-stringer]

According to express-session, this is what I did:

import { Request } from "express";
import session from "express-session";

declare module "express-session" {
  interface SessionData {
    userId?: number;
  }
}

export type MyContext = {
  req: Request & { session: session.SessionData };
  res: Response;
};

You can see where I got this idea in the Type definition for session.SessionData (ctrl+right click in VsCode):

    /**
     * This interface allows you to declare additional properties on your session object using [declaration merging](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/declaration-merging.html).
     *
     * @example
     * declare module 'express-session' {
     *     interface SessionData {
     *         views: number;
     *     }
     * }
     *
     */
    interface SessionData {
        cookie: Cookie;
    }

[ahmedrowaihi]

I guess this issue has to be closed! like all solutions here do work fine!

[BookmDan]

Yes I'm having a similar issue. On to the next project for now...

…

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 2:36 PM SSouper ***@***.***> wrote: I literally can't get express-session to work lmao, even if it sets a cookie, req.session is undefined and it's in the right order. Even copied your code & package versions. It seems to send the cookie back to express but it just refuses to fetch the set value... At this point, setting a session cookie manually if it does not exist then looking up the key is redis is actually a lot easier to do than getting express-session to work. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#13 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACEDGR47SSYDDVMOZXG6MSLTALL5HANCNFSM4TRFP64A> .

[SSouper]

Yes I'm having a similar issue. On to the next project for now...

It seems like the apollo middleware removes every field from req that "should not be there" (session included). I put a middleware function before apollo but after express-session and req.session was there.

[benawad]

do you get the same result if you clone my code?

[SSouper]

@benawad looks like i forgot to destructure the first argument to the context function. Strangely, typescript didn't tell me that i'm a bad boy...

[AaronMcCloskey]

@dzirg44 This should work.

import { Request, Response } from 'express';
import { Session, SessionData } from 'express-session';

export type MyContext = {
  req: Request & {
    session: Session & Partial<SessionData> & { userId?: number };
  };
  res: Response;
};

Trying this method has resulted in this error for me

node_modules/@types/connect-redis/index.d.ts:32:72 - error TS2694: Namespace 'global.Express' has no exported member 'SessionData'.

    ttl?: number | string | ((store: RedisStore, sess: Express.SessionData, sid: string) => number);
    

Package.json

devDependencies": {
    "@types/connect-redis": "^0.0.14",
    "@types/express": "^4.17.7",
    "@types/express-session": "^1.17.0",
    "@types/node": "^14.0.27",
    "@types/redis": "^2.8.25",
    "nodemon": "^2.0.4",
    "ts-node": "^8.10.2",
    "typescript": "^3.9.7"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "@mikro-orm/cli": "^4.0.0-alpha.0",
    "@mikro-orm/core": "^4.0.0-alpha.0",
    "@mikro-orm/migrations": "^4.0.0-alpha.0",
    "@mikro-orm/postgresql": "^4.0.0-alpha.0",
    "apollo-server-express": "^2.16.1",
    "argon2": "^0.26.2",
    "class-validator": "^0.13.1",
    "connect-redis": "^5.0.0",
    "express": "^4.17.1",
    "express-session": "^1.17.1",
    "graphql": "^15.3.0",
    "pg": "^8.3.0",
    "redis": "^3.0.2",
    "reflect-metadata": "^0.1.13",
    "type-graphql": "^1.0.0-rc.3"
  },

The solution I found was adding this, but it feels kind of hacky, is there a better solution?

declare global {
  namespace Express {
    interface SessionData {
      cookie: any;
    }
    interface Session {
      userId?: number;
    }
  }
}

[mattrgibson]

Don't forget to ensure that the GraphQL playground settings have credentials to include. This took me an hour to remember that Ben mentioned this very early on in the video:

[sandeep-v1404]

Looks like the session type has been removed from express, you could probably just do:

Request & { session: { userId: string } };

It should be

Request & { session: { userId?: number } }

because again in UserResolver me( ) Query, Id is a number.

const user = em.findOne(User, { id: req.session.userId }); // where id is a number.

[skele2k]

I have tried several methods and for whatever reason, there is not a cookie being saved...

maybe you should check your constant
it must be
export const __prod__ = process.env.NODE_ENV === "production";
not
export const __prod__ = process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production";

[Deveshb15]

Don't forget to ensure that the GraphQL playground settings have credentials to include. This took me an hour to remember that Ben mentioned this very early on in the video:

When I change it from "omit" to "include" I get this error, any solution for this?

and I get this cors error in the console

[gierle]

I found a weird behaviour and can't really explain why this is:

When setting the req.session.userId to the uid in login or register, the mutation gets executed properly, but the frontend never revieves a response. But when i don't set the 'userID', a response is recieved.

So for example the following code

req.session.userId = user._id; 
console.log(req.session) // this gets printed 
return { user };

would print the session object with cookie and userId, but the frontend never leaves the fetching state and eventually times out.
The same for the playground btw

---

The solution is an incompatibility between connect-redis and node-redis as described in this issue:
tj/connect-redis#336

Replace this line in index.ts
const redisClient = createClient({ legacyMode: true });

[amarkmcconn]

This post helps fix the the switch from playground to sandbox if you are unable to test the cookie login

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69333408/express-session-does-not-set-cookie/70673115#70673115