Sails.js session not saved upon first request - session

Question

I'm using Sails.js and trying to do a simple login with saving the user information to the session. Here's my code for the login action:
AuthService.login(req.body.email, req.body.password).then(user => {
// save user information in the session
req.session.user = user;
req.session.authenticated = true;
return res.json({
user:user,
token:token
});
}).catch(err => {
sails.log.error(err);
res.json(403, {
callstack: err.callstack,
error: 'Authentication error',
reason : err.reason
});
});
This is my policy for the other pages (after login):
module.exports = function(req, res, next) {
// User is allowed, proceed to the next policy,
if (req.session.authenticated && req.session.user) {
return next();
}
// User is not allowed
return res.forbidden('You are not permitted to perform this action. (Authenticated)');
};
The problem is that the session data is not saved for the first request meaning I'm getting 403 forbidden only after the first successful login. As a result I must then logout and then login again for the session data to appear.
The issue is not limited to the login (with authentication policy) but also applies for any action that requires the session data with or without policy. And occurs for each new session - not only the first time the server goes up.
I thought the problem was due to using memory session so I've also tried to configure Sail.js to work with Redis as the session store by modifying the config/session.js to the following:
adapter: 'redis',
// host: 'localhost',
// port: 6379,
// ttl: 60*60*20,
// db: 0,
// prefix: 'sess:',
I uncommented the adapter line and tried with and without the optional redis connection parameters but then the req.session was declared undefined everywhere

Answer 1

I'm using the connect-mongo adapter and found a similar problem. The reason is because when you use req.session.user = user the background code is saving your session to DB (in my case, Mongo, in yours Redis), and before it finishes, your code executes the res.json part.
To deal with the DB saving's asynchronous code, try to do something like this (haven't tested your code, but doing that to my case, solved the problem):
AuthService.login(req.body.email, req.body.password).then(user => {
// save user information in the session
// this is on memory
req.session.user = user;
req.session.authenticated = true;
// now the session is saved in DB
req.session.save(function() {
return res.json({
user:user,
token:token
});
}
}).catch(err => {
sails.log.error(err);
res.json(403, {
callstack: err.callstack,
error: 'Authentication error',
reason : err.reason
});
});