Calling `reset_session` in Rails 4.0.0 not working on 2nd subsequent page

Question

I've been building something in Rails 4.0.0 and I'm getting weird session behaviour. I have a login process that writes a value to session. Its absence is how I determine the user is not logged in: ``` def login session[:user_id] = user.id #Then we render a simple page... end ``` To verify that that I have a valid user, I have a helper in my `application_controller.rb`: ``` def current_user logger.info "(current_user) Session ID: #{request.session[:user_id]}" if session[:user_id] != nil && session[:user_id] != -1 User.find(session[:user_id]) end end helper_method :current_user ``` This is called from several different places to check the user status and decide how to render the page. (The `!= -1` is explained below.) On logout I reset the session: ``` def logout reset_session end ``` The view that is rendered includes a call to the `current_user` helper method to render the navigation. This page is rendered with my navigation partial showing as having no current user, and and debug lo…

Accepted Answer

Damn. I was attempting to make this app multi tenancy, and had the following in my `session_store.rb`:

```
# Be sure to restart your server when you modify this file.
MyApp::Application.config.session_store :cookie_store, key: '_MyApp_session'

#writes cookies across all subdomain of this site.
Rails.application.config.session_store :cookie_store, :key => '_my_key', :domain => ENV['APP_DOMAIN']
```

Apparently this is bad and causes all kinds of crazy stuff to happen with your cookies and sessions. The clue should be in the `_my_key`, which I think is non-standard? My guess is I got this from another SO question, without fully realising the implications.

Calling `reset_session` in Rails 4.0.0 not working on 2nd subsequent page

Solution

Problem