Save session as BSON instead of a String on node.js with MongoDB

Question

I am using node.js with express and connect-mongo as session store. When I am checking my sessions collection in mongo, there is only the _id attribute a session attribute in each dataset. The value of the session attribute is a String. Is there any way to store the session data as BSON?

Answer 1

Maybe I don't understand your question directly but MongoDB already stores everything using BSON. So if you even store it your Session collection as it is, it will get converted into a JSON string.

reference: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Inserting

EDIT:

Also take a look at this > Mongo JSON document -> JSON -> BSON

This may help in your specific scenario.

Answer 2

That is simply the way this particular middleware was written to work (though who knows why it was done that way).

It converts your session object into a json string when it saves it to mongodb, and converts it back into an object when it's read again.

I suggest switching to the alternative connect-mongodb middleware if you want session objects stored as the same object in mongodb. The connection for connect-mongodb is a bit different from connect-mongo, but once you have the connection set up, the rest of the api is the same so your existing code should just work.

Answer 3

good question, I'm struggling with this myself. The only thing I can think of is to keep it as string jsons. Then if you need to query for a property, loop through the session collections and check for a particular regex, that targets the property you are looking for.

Answer 4

Add stringify: true in you session DB setup:

//We register the expressSession middleware in our express_server_router
express_server_router.use(expressSession({
  //Pass in the configuration object with value secret
  //The secret string is used to sign and encrypt the session ID cookie being shared with the browser
  secret: ENV.express_session_secret,
  resave: false,
  saveUninitialized: true,
  store: MongoStore.create({
    // mongoUrl: 'mongodb+srv',
    mongoUrl: ENV.database_link,
    // mongoUrl: 'mongodb+srv',
    collectionName: 'sessions',
    // ttl: 1000*60*60*24 // 1 Day,
    stringify: true,
  }),
  cookie: {
    secure: false,
    sameSite: 'strict',
    //originalMaxAge: 24*60*60
    maxAge: 1000*60*60*24 // 1 Day
  }
}))