Iron session is not updating req.session object - session

Question

I have a page where users can give themselves a "role" like member or admin. They can go to another route to create messages. I am trying to update user's role from "user" to "admin". It updates req.session to admin role in the admin.js file, but when I go to messages/create.js and try to log req.session, it shows that user still has the "user" role. I am saving the changes I make by calling req.session.save(), but it is not working.
admin.js
import { withIronSessionApiRoute } from "iron-session/next";
import nc from "next-connect";
import { session_config } from "../../lib/config";
import Users from "../../models/user";
import { connectToDatabase } from "../../util/mongodb";
const handler = nc()
handler.post(async (req) => {
if (req.body.password === process.env.ADMIN_PASSWORD) {
await connectToDatabase()
await Users.findOneAndUpdate({ name: req.session.user.name }, { role: "admin" })
const updated_user = { name: req.session.user.name, role: "admin" }
req.session.user = updated_user
await req.session.save()
}
})
export default withIronSessionApiRoute(handler, session_config);
messages/create.js
import { withIronSessionApiRoute } from "iron-session/next";
import nc from "next-connect";
import { session_config } from "../../../lib/config";
const handler = nc()
handler.post(async (req) => {
console.log(req.session.user)
console.log(req.body)
})
export default withIronSessionApiRoute(handler, session_config)
Please let me know what the issue is and how I can fix it. Thank you

Answer 1

The first thing I noticed from looking at the code is that you're not sending a response back to the client. Iron session uses cookies to manage stateless authentication and the way it manages is by setting the response header. Because you're not sending a response, it can't update the session.
Looking further into the API documentation, session.save() - "Saves the session and sets the cookie header to be sent once the response is sent."
Not knowing your full implementation or having a working code example from something like codesandbox.io, I suggest the following code to see if this solves your problem.
// please make sure that `res` is a parameter on the `.post()` function
// on your original code. I've already set it as shown below.
handler.post(async (req, res) => {
if (req.body.password === process.env.ADMIN_PASSWORD) {
await connectToDatabase()
await Users.findOneAndUpdate({ name: req.session.user.name }, { role: "admin" })
const updated_user = { name: req.session.user.name, role: "admin" }
req.session.user = updated_user
await req.session.save()
// response below
res.send({ ok: true })
// or if you don't want to send custom data back, comment the line above,
// and then uncomment the line below
// res.status(200).end()
}
})
Attempt 2
I made an iron session demo on Codesandbox using some of the demo code from the iron session repo NextJs example.
The code example shows:
login
log out
setting a user as an admin
fetching user data from server-side
fetching user data from client-side
fetching using SWR
Some side notes to be aware of: if you are doing something like
const sessionData = req.session.user, then trying to mutate the req.session.user, and then sending the data back, it won't work because the session object will be recreated per request and node cannot store req.session as a reference.
If my demo doesn't help you, then you're going to have to share more info and code, and maybe create a Codesandbox to reproduce what is happening to you.