Working with cookies in Express

Cookies are a standard method of storing and retrieving persistent properties and values between a web server and a web application. Express contains tools out of the box to read and write cookies and sign cookies to make sure that they are genuine.

Getting ready

Let's create a user session so that we can track user behaviors as individuals. We'll also make a special route, which when hit will set our session as a special administrator role.

By default, Express installs the cookie-parser module, and we will need that for this recipe, but, in case you don't have it installed, you can do so with NPM:

npm install cookie-parser --save

How to do it...

Let's follow the steps below to create a user session cookie in Express:

1. First, let's create a new route configuration called routes/session.js. This will contain all the logic needed to read and write our user session using cookies:

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();

router.all('*', function...