Get logged in user by searching cakephp 2.x session table

Question

I wanted to use the session table to get a list of all logged in users. To do this I attempted to use the following code to query the cake_sessions table:

$this->loadModel('CakeSession');
$sessions = $this->CakeSession->find('all', array('fields' => 'data'));
// next I process session data to find logged in users

But running this code I get the following error:

Call to undefined method CakeSession::find()

If I use the following code to directly access the table it works just fine:

$db = ConnectionManager::getDataSource("default");
$sessions = $db->fetchAll("SELECT data from cake_sessions");
// next I process session data to find logged in users

Is accessing the session table restricted? My current solution works just fine but I am confused why I cant use the the CakeSession->find().

Answer 1

Because CakeSession is not a model class. See http://api.cakephp.org/2.8/class-CakeSession.html

The class you refer to is a datasource as the "namespace" tells you as well: Cake\\Model\\Datasource . In Cake2 session access was implemented as datasource. "Model" is a layer not just a single type of files.

Create a proper session model class in your apps Model folder. See http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/models.html

You might have to name it different to avoid conflicts because Cake2 is not using real php namespaces unlike Cake3.