Node.js - Trying to avoid globals...how do I keep track of a user object?

Ok, so here is the scenario. I have the user log into my app with facebook. When this happens Passport saves it to the Session (req.user). This works all well and good when I am working in a page that has access to the request object, but I find myself in the situation where I don't have access to request, but I need to check the user object.

Case in point. I am using socket.io and when I am working with the sockets and the methods surrounding them, I don't have access to the request object and therefore I can't get user info.

I keep hearing that I need to stay away from globals whenever possible, but I can't see a way around it.

Thoughts?

Below is an example of me working with sockets. This module is called from my server.js file.

function loadSockets(io)
{
    var articleCommand = require('./middleware/ArticleCommand');

    io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
        socket.on('getArticles', function(){
            if (NEED USER INFO HERE !== null){
                articleCommand.getArticlesByUser(NEED USER INFO HERE, function(error, articles){
                    io.sockets.emit('articlesRetrieved', error, articles);
                });
            }
        });
    });
}

exports.loadSockets = loadSockets;

Update

Ok, so based on the commenters advice I have installed this: https://github.com/aviddiviner/Socket.IO-sessions and applied it...but my session is always null in my sockets.

Here is what I have.

var socket = sio.enable({
    socket: io.listen(server, {'log level': 1, 'heartbeat': false}),   
    store:  mystore,                // this is my Redis store
    parser: express.cookieParser()
});

later on...when processing my sockets

socket.sockets.on('connection', function (socket, session) { ...

The session is always null...even though my passport has loaded up my session correctly.

Thoughts?

Ok, so for posterity's sake, here is what I did to fix this issue.

You can see from my update above that I tried to use the SocketIO-sessions module, but that didn't work.

After more research I found that I needed to make sure I got the passport session since that is what is doing my authentication.

I found this little gem: https://github.com/jfromaniello/passport.socketio

This worked like a charm. The only thing that took some figuring out is getting the key setup correctly (they assume you know how to do that in the example).

sio.set("authorization", passportSocketIo.authorize({
    key:    'MYKEY',       
    secret: 'SECRET',
    store:   mySessionStore
}));

Out of the box, your key is not set. To do that simply set it up with your app like so:

app.use(express.session({
    secret: "SECRET",
    store: mySessionStore,
    key: 'MYKEY',
    cookie: { secure: false, maxAge:86400000 }
}));

Hope this helps someone.

David