Store a class instance in session server side w/ Padrino?

Question

I have a class that reads from a DB on startup. I'd prefer to be able to store it in the session, but I get the following error when trying to do so: ERROR TypeError: no marshal_dump is defined for class Mutex Is what I'm doing possible/reasonable? If so how should I go about doing it? If not, whats a good alternative to storing the class instance in the session? Currently my workaround is just instantiating it whenever I need to use it, but that doesn't strike me as a good solution or one that will be able to scale.

Answer 1

A good alternative is to store the id of the record in the session. Then when you need that data again you'd use a helper to return the data either from memory or from the database. A perfect example is the pattern used in current_user helper methods found in many ruby authentication gems. You could modify this helper to use a cache layer if you find it to be a bottleneck, but I'd leave that as an optimization after the fact.

Issues of having to get the object into a marshaled format that will live happily in a session, there are issues with storage space, stale data and possibly unintentional exposure to confidential data.