Android to use cookies or sessions?

Question

I am working on an android app that is actually gets user data from android device and then to put it on the server, like to get user name, password, email for registration purpose and then user login to access the app menu (to see list of products, search for products and to add his/her own product details in the list). So using cookies and sessions would be a good idea for my app. Cookies can be blocked by the user and sessions every time to login to access.

But as i am totally new to this concept of cookies and sessions so it would be good to ask a question here before i have to start, that which one should i use cookies or sessions ?

Answer 1

The user can not block cookies. Cookies are simply headers that you will send in each request.

Cookies are easier to handle on the server side. You will simply use $_SESSION["variable"] to get/set any variable for the user. It will simplify your life on the server. However, I think the main drawback will be maintainability and administration of sessions. For example, if a user logs in again on a different device and you want the first session to be invalidated. It is not very straight forward.

If you want to use sessions, you will probably save them in a table on some database. You will need to fetch the session details when you need them. This is sort of extra effort. Yet, database sessions provide some kind of administration capabilities straight away.

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I prefer database sessions for what is stated above and some other reasons. However it is up to you