Simple and general Client-side Persistence solution?

Question

Hi all:

Have to say I wish I could implement server-side persistence (i.e., session-based and/or database-based user state persistence), but unfortunately my uni's server has limited resources provided and it is really hard to implemented a Perl based session solution (CGI::Session and Apache::Session not installed, dated Perl version, dated Perl environment, etc).

So I guess my last resort would be with some client-side persistence approach, most preferably Javascript-based, should be not a solution only for Flash or HTML5.

I just did a little bit research online for this unfamiliar topic and found these:

Pablotron: PersistJS Dojox.storage YUI 2 Storage Utility

I wonder which would give me the simplest way of managing user session, basically, I reckon I only need to manage the user session Id, and maybe several other important keys; for the rest of data, I will just put them in database.

This is purely for uni work so I am not considering of having a really thorough solution. I know there must be certain drawbacks for this, such as security risks, but... please just confirm me whether this is a feasible and practical way.

Thanks for any suggestion in advance!

Answer 1

I would honestly recommend you using apache's htaccess/htpasswd for this. It handles sessions in a safe way and you can grant access to multiple users and/or groups. The downside is that accounts creation and passwords (re)assignation has to be manual. Of course the benefits (one being 0 development time) greatly overcomes the downsides.

Answer 2

You just need to store a session id and a few other keys on the client side? Isn't that exactly what cookies are designed for?