Of course, I meant to write "If you have *them* login, write out their username with the values" rather than "If you have *then* login".
And lest anyone feel cheeky about my saying CFLOG was "new", I meant that with respect to someone (like Sam) working on CF5, which is the release in which it was introduced. /charlie > -----Original Message----- > From: Charlie Arehart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 6:26 PM > To: CF-Talk > Subject: RE: Session Variables Dropping > > > Do you mean one session variable among many, or all session > variables, for a > given user? When all the user's session variables "disappear", it's often > simply because the session key (CFID and CFTOKEN) for the user is > changing. > These are usually managed (passed from request to request) by way of > cookies. > > This sudden "disappearance" usually is caused by something causing those > cookies to be lost, so that CF creates new values for them and the link to > the old session variable values is lost. > > Could this be a situation where the user experiencing the loss is > not using > cookies? Are you coding to anticipate that? > > Might they have cleared their cookie cache? Or be using a > filtering or other > program that might be blocking or "eating/deleting" their cookies? Might > they be behind a proxy that's either blocking or hiding them? Or > causing the > same values to be shared by many users? Could they have logged > off one user > on their machine and logged on with another, which would cause > them to have > new cookies? Or might they have moved from one computer to another during > their "session" thus losing their cookies? > > Here's a simple test: since you're using CF 5, you have access to the new > CFLOG tag. Write out a log entry (to a file of your choosing) the > values of > the user's CFID and CFTOKEN, and some identifying characteristic for the > user, to see if the values of CFID/CFTOKEN are changing for them when the > sessions appear to be "lost". If you have then log in, write out their > username with the values. Assuming you had a session.username value, you > could try: > > <cflog text="#session.username# #session.URLtoken# #cgi.remote_addr#" > file="CatchSessErrors" type="Information" thread="yes" date="yes" > time="yes" > application="yes"> > > This will only work as offered if you have a variable called > session.username. If not, remove that reference in the TEXT attribute. It > will write an entry to a file called CatchSessErrors.log in the log > directory where CF is installed: in CF 5, that is. In CFMX, the > directory's > called logs (as in cfusionmx\logs), and in BlueDragon, it's in the > BlueDragon Server's work\cflog directory. > > It's writing out session.URLToken, which is a reserved variable > in CFML for > the session key (the CFID/CFTOKEN pair in CF 5). > > If you're not having them log in to give you any unique username, > you could > try their IP Address (cgi.http_host), which is offered in that example as > well. The only risk there is that if they're using a Proxy, you > may see the > same values of IP address for the given CFID/CFTOKEN even if it's multiple > users. As a last resort, you could write out (or create a hash of) their > cgi.remote_user, cgi.http_user_agent, and cgi.http_accept, to try to > distinguish users reported as having the same IP address. > > Anyway, the whole point of the exercise is to see if the same user (best > indicated by some login username or their IP address) is getting different > session tokens (CFID/CFTOKEN, as represented in session.URLToken). If they > are, then there's something wrong on their end, not likely with > your code at > all. > > If you don't have access to the log files, you could write out to > a separate > file in the application directory with CFFILE. And if that's restricted, > just drop back to using CFOUTPUT to write the values to the screen for the > user to report to you. They and you will now have to track them > over time to > detect when the problem arises, but it's a solution. > > If you don't want that ugliness appearing on screen, you could > have it done > only in a special template that they call (the session variable issues > should apply to all templates in a given directory), or you could > write them > to the screen in a way that's hidden unless they highlight it > (such as using > <font color="white"> if outputting on a white screen, or using > stylesheets). > > Hope any of these tips may help. Sounds like fodder for me to > come up with a > new article! :-) I'll look forward to hearing what others have to say on > the subject. > > /charlie > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Sam Komolafe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 5:40 PM > > To: CF-Talk > > Subject: Session Variables Dropping > > > > > > Hi, > > > > Why could session variables be dropping intermetently on my app. > > The variables are properly locked. On each page I localize the > > variables by moving them to a local scope. Once in a while, this > > local variables which should always be there are not found. I am > > using CF5 Pro on a Win2000 Server. > > > > Thanks > > Sam > > > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
