Getting the current user in express.js, while using socket.io?

Question

I\'m using the express framework, and part of my web app uses socket.io to enable real-time chat. I need to get the current user\'s username, and create a room with him in it. T

Answer 1

This has been asked a few times but the older answers I found do not work anymore. The answer lies in parsing socket.handshake.headers.cookie but this is hacky and will depend on the internals of express-session.

Anyways, this should work for now with Express 4 and socket.io 1.1:

var express   = require('express'),
    session   = require('express-session'),
    cookie    = require('cookie'),
    signature = require('cookie-signature');

var app    = express(), 
    store  = new session.MemoryStore(),
    secret = 'session-secret-key',
    name   = 'connect.sid';

app.use(session({
  name:   name,
  secret: secret,
  store:  store,
  resave: true,
  saveUninitialized: true
}));

var server = require('http').createServer(app),
    io     = require('socket.io')(server);

io.on('connection', function(socket) {
  if (socket.handshake && socket.handshake.headers && socket.handshake.headers.cookie) {
    var raw = cookie.parse(socket.handshake.headers.cookie)[name];
    if (raw) {
      // The cookie set by express-session begins with s: which indicates it
      // is a signed cookie. Remove the two characters before unsigning.
      socket.sessionId = signature.unsign(raw.slice(2), secret) || undefined;
    }
  }
  if (socket.sessionId) {
    store.get(socket.sessionId, function(err, session) {
      console.log(session);
    });
  }
});