Adding a cookie value on Socket.IO

Question

Adding a cookie value on Socket.IO

How to add a cookie value on Socket.IO?

io.sockets.on('connection', function (client)
{ 
    console.log(client.id); 
    client.handshake.headers.cookie.socketID = client.id;   // not work
 // client.handshake.headers.cookie("socketID",client.id);  //crash

    console.log(client.handshake.headers.cookie);
// The current output is:
//connect.sid=tI21xumy3u2n4QXO1GljmPAf.pzFQ1Xu%2B6bz36secu4VSCdSNU8PT1L44gQZ4kFUFQqQ
//this is express session id, and I also want to add client.id of Socket.IO. 

//...........
}

I have read http://www.danielbaulig.de/socket-ioexpress/ , but I do not need session management on node.js, but just need to add a socket.io client ID value in cookie as connect.sid does.

node.js
cookies
express
socket.io

Answer 1

Take a look at Authorization with Socket.io. This is where it handles the initial connection request, and where you can set a response header.

I'm not sure if the cookie(name,value) shorthand works, though you can try setting it manually:

    var date = new Date();
    date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000)); // set day value to expiry
    var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString();

    handshake.headers.cookie = name+"="+value+expires+"; path=/";

Answer 2

May seem hacky, I tried all sorts of ways to set a cookie on response to the handshake get request with no success. However, I managed to make it work by tweaking the socket.io prototype code it-self.

In socket.io version 1.3.4,

in \node_modules\socket.io\node_modules\engine.io\lib\server.js

change line 249 from :

headers['Set-Cookie'] = self.cookie + '=' + id;

to

headers['Set-Cookie'] = req.headers.cookie;

all cookies in the request will be returned in the response