What can I attach to pylons.request in Pylons?

Question

I want keep track of a unique identifier for each browser that connects to my web application (that is written in Pylons.) I keep a cookie on the client to keep track of this, but if the cookie isn't present, then I want to generate a new unique identifier that will be sent back to the client with the response, but I also may want to access this value from other code used to generate the response.

Is attaching this value to pylons.request safe? Or do I need to do something like use threading_local to make a thread local that I reset when each new request is handled?

Answer 1

Why do you want a unique identifier? Basically every visitor already gets a unique identifier, his Session. Beaker, Pylons session and caching middleware, does all the work and tracks visitors, usually with a Session cookie. So don't care about tracking users, just use the Session for what it's made for, to store whatever user specific stuff you have .

from pylons import session
session["something"] = whatever()
session.save()

# somewhen later
something = session["something"]

Answer 2

Whatever you were to set on the request will only survive for the duration of the request. the problem you are describing is more appropriately handled with a Session as TCH4k has said. It's already enabled in the middleware, so go ahead.