Basic ActiveRecordStore updated_at field not being updated on every request

Question

I'm using the standard active_record_store in my app. In environment.rb I have:

config.action_controller.session_store = :active_record_store

And my sessions table was created with rake db:sessions:create:

create_table :sessions do |t|
  t.string :session_id, :null => false
  t.text :data
  t.timestamps
end

add_index :sessions, :session_id
add_index :sessions, :updated_at

However the updated_at column isn't being updated on each request. It is being updated upon session creation (to the same value as created_at, as expected) but not for any subsequent requests.

Oddly, if I declare the following explicit call in environment.rb then the field is updated on each request:

class CGI::Session::ActiveRecordStore::Session
 def before_save
  self.updated_at = Time.now
 end
end

Can anyone explain why this doesn't work by default?

I'm running Rails 2.1.0 -- and no, I can't upgrade Rails at the moment! :)

Answer 1

Are you updating the session? If you aren't updating the values, then I believe the session won't be saved to disk.

class WhateverController < ActionController
  def index
    session[:whatever] = true
  end
end