Introduction

Products.BeakerSessionDataManager is a replacement for the default Zope 2 session implementation. It uses Beaker as a backend (via collective.beaker) and adapts the Beaker session to provide the same interface as a normal Zope session.

Beaker is a better alternative to the default session implementation for several reasons:

• The Zope session implementation does not perform well in high-write scenarios.
• Beaker provides better flexibility in where session data is actually stored.
• Beaker is used and maintained outside of the Zope ecosystem.

Note

If you are developing a product that needs sessions but are not already using Zope sessions, you should probably just use collective.beaker directly. This product is meant for use with existing add-ons that already use Zope sessions (i.e. request.SESSION).

Installation

1. Add the Products.BeakerSessionDataManager egg to your buildout:

   [instance]
   eggs =
       Products.BeakerSessionDataManager
   

2. Make sure that buildout adds Beaker configuration to zope.conf. For example:

   zope-conf-additional =
       <product-config beaker>
           session.type            file
           session.data_dir        ${buildout:directory}/var/sessions/data
           session.lock_dir        ${buildout:directory}/var/sessions/lock
           session.key             beaker.session
           session.secret          secret
       </product-config>
   

   The "secret" should be replaced with a unique string for your system. It must be the same for all Zope instances using the same session store.

   See the collective.beaker docs for more details on configuration.

3. In the ZMI, delete the session_data_manager object and add a Beaker Session Data Manager.

Notes

• Beaker does not automatically clean up old sessions, so you may want to set up a cron job to take care of this.