What's the best way to handle session timeouts in ajax requests?

Question

Consider this Django view which will get a list of items associated to the current user:

@login_required
def list_items(request, page_number=0):
    items = Pagi         


        

Answer 1

I would handle it by having your session timeout method check whether or not it is being requested with AJAX. If it is ajax, return a 401 not authorized(or 403 forbidden or whatever status makes sense) status code with an empty json string. Next, in your javascript, bind a global ajaxError handler that checks for that status code and handles it appropriately.