Node.js why is my session object empty after adding values to it

Question

I'm new to node.js and I'm stuck here. I have the following code in my router:

router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {

// Initialize the game

if(!req.session.gameStarted) {
    req.session.gameStarted = true;
    req.session.serverStocks = [];

    setInterval(function() {
          req.session.serverStocks.push('new object');
          console.log('This works as it should, returns an array full of objects ->');
          console.log(req.session.serverStocks);
  }, 4000);
}
else {
    console.log('After refresh, this is always empty ->');
    console.log(req.session.serverStocks);

    console.log('Although this returns "true" as it should which means sessions work OK ->');
    console.log(req.session.gameStarted);
}

res.render('pages/homepage', { title: 'Hello' });
});

My goal is when a user loads the page for the first time it'll initialize an empty session object for him/her. Then every 4000 seconds the "new object" string will be added to it. The first visit part is working well, but when I refresh the page the session object is always empty. What am I missing? What is the right way to do this?

/// this is the part from app.js that is related to session

var session = require('express-session')({
secret: 'shhh_very_secret',
resave: true,
saveUninitialized: true,
cookie: { secure: false }
});
var sharedsession = require("express-socket.io-session");

// Express
var app = express();

// Config (game and app settings)
var config = require('./config/config.js');
app.config = config;

// Session
app.use(session);

// Socket.io
app.io = socket_io();
app.io.use(sharedsession(session, {
    autoSave:true
}));

I was using socket.io but after I removed it from the client side so it shouldn't affect the code (or?).

// EDIT: I think the code inside setInterval function is working with some own scope because it's not really adding anything to my object if I check it outside of the function

Answer 1

Express doesn't support sessions out of the box. Make sure you are using middleware that adds sessions, eg https://github.com/expressjs/session