Django Sessions: Learn How to Keep Your App Secure and User-Friendly

In Django, a session is a way to store data on the server side that can be accessed by the client side. This is useful for maintaining state across multiple requests, such as when a user logs in to a website and needs to be remembered on subsequent pages.

To use Django’s session framework, you need to set the SESSION_ENGINE setting in your project’s settings.py file. The default value is ‘django.contrib.sessions.backends.db’, which stores session data in the database.

Once you have enabled the session framework, you can use the request.session object in your views to store and retrieve data for the current session. For example, to store a value in the session, you can use the following code:

request.session['key'] = 'value'

To retrieve a value from the session, you can use the following code:

value = request.session.get('key', default_value)

You can also use the request.session object to store complex data types such as lists or dictionaries. The session data is encrypted and signed, so it is secure against tampering.

By default, Django’s session framework will store the session data in the database, but you can also use other backends such as cache or file storage if you prefer. You can also customize the way that Django stores and retrieves session data by writing your own session backend.