# 14.2 Sessions

In chapter 6, we introduced some basic concepts pertaining to sessions in Go, and we implemented a sessions manager. The Beego framework uses this session manager to implement some convenient session handling functionality. 

## Integrating sessions

Beego handles sessions mainly according to the following global variables:

	// related to session
	SessionOn bool	// whether or not to open the session module. Defaults to false. 
	SessionProvider string	// the desired session backend processing module. Defaults to an in-memory sessionManager 
	SessionName string	// the name of the client saved cookies
	SessionGCMaxLifetime int64	// cookie validity

	GlobalSessions *session.Manager// global session controller

Of course, the above values of these variables need to be initialized. You can also use the values from the following configuration file code to set these values:

	if ar, err := AppConfig.Bool("sessionon"); err != nil {
		SessionOn = false
	} else {
		SessionOn = ar
	}
	if ar := AppConfig.String("sessionprovider"); ar == "" {
		SessionProvider = "memory"
	} else {
		SessionProvider = ar
	}
	if ar := AppConfig.String("sessionname"); ar == "" {
		SessionName = "beegosessionID"
	} else {
		SessionName = ar
	}
	if ar, err := AppConfig.Int("sessiongcmaxlifetime"); err != nil && ar != 0 {
		int64val, _ := strconv.ParseInt(strconv.Itoa(ar), 10, 64)
		SessionGCMaxLifetime = int64val
	} else {
		SessionGCMaxLifetime = 3600
	}

Add the following code in the `beego.Run` function:

	if SessionOn {
		GlobalSessions, _ = session.NewManager(SessionProvider, SessionName, SessionGCMaxLifetime)
		go GlobalSessions.GC()
	}

As long as `SessionOn` is set to true, it will open the session by default with an independent goroutine session handler 

In order to facilitate our custom Controller quickly using session, the author `beego.Controller` provides the following methods:

To assist us in quickly using sessions in a custom Controller, `beego.Controller` provides the following method:

	func (c *Controller) StartSession() (sess session.Session) {
		sess = GlobalSessions.SessionStart(c.Ctx.ResponseWriter, c.Ctx.Request)
		return
	}		

## Session using

Through the above code we can see, beego framework simply inherit the session function, then how to use it in your project ?

First, we need to apply the main entrance open session:

	beego.SessionOn = true


We can then corresponding method in the controller to use the session as follows: the

	func (this *MainController) Get() {
		var intcount int
		sess := this.StartSession()
		count := sess.Get("count")
		if count == nil {
			intcount = 0
		} else {
			intcount = count.(int)
		}
		intcount = intcount + 1
		sess.Set("count", intcount)
		this.Data["Username"] = "astaxie"
		this.Data["Email"] = "astaxie@gmail.com"
		this.Data["Count"] = intcount
		this.TplNames = "index.tpl"
	}

The above code shows how to use the control logic session, mainly divided into two steps:

1. Get session object

		// Get the object, similar in PHP session_start()
		sess:= this.StartSession()

2. to use the session for general session value operation

		// Get the session values , similar in PHP $ _SESSION ["count"]
		sess.Get("count")
		
		// Set the session value
		sess.Set("count", intcount)

As can be seen from the above code beego framework based applications developed using the session quite easy, basically, and PHP to call `session_start()` similar.

## Links

- [Directory](preface.md)
- Previous section: [Static files](14.1.md)
- Next section: [Form](14.3.md)