What a base controller that will look for a session cookie, and if present, set the User object

Question

I want to use a custom base controller for my wep application that has a User object as a property, and a boolean IsLoggedIn property.

In the constructor of the base controller (or whatever event I need to do this in??) I want to look for a session cookie, if present, load the user and set the User object and set the IsLoggedIn property to true.

I'm very new to pylons so any guidance would be appreciated.

Answer 1

In your code that is responsible for logging user in, after verification of user name and password you can store user id in session and make redirect:

session['user_id'] = authenticated_user.id
session.save()
h.redirect_to('/')

and then, in BaseController.init assign user instance to controller's property like this:

self.user = session.get('user_id') and Session.query(User).get(session['user_id'])

This way if user is authenticated you get his instance in self.user. Otherwise self.user is going to be None.

And to logout someone just remove 'user_id' from Pylons' session:

del session['user_id']

PS: I've made some assumptions such as that you are using SQLAlchemy for database backend, but you get the point

Answer 2

Also you can use before method of controller like this:

class MyControllerWithUserProperty(BaseController):

   def __before__(self, action, **params):
       # check the cookies
       # ...

       self.user = <user object>

       # set others properties
       # ...