9.11.5 Session

Service directive: Session ... End

Defines how a service deals with possible HTTP sessions. Once a session is identified, pound will attempt to send all requests within that session to the same backend server.

See Sessions, for a detailed discussion of HTTP sessions and their handling.

The following directives are available for use in Session section.

Session directive: Type type

Defines the expected type of sessions to handle. Allowed values for type are:

IP

A session is defined by the source IP. All requests coming from the same IP are considered to be in the same session. The IP address is defined by the ID statement (see below).

BASIC

A session is defined by the Authentication HTTP header. If the header is present, and specifies the ‘Basic’ authentication type, user ID is extracted from it.

URL

A session is identified by the value of a particular query parameter. The name of the parameter is given by the ID statement.

PARM

Sessions are identified by HTTP parameter - a string that appears after a semicolon in the URL, such as ‘bar’ in ‘http://foo.com;bar’.

COOKIE

Sessions are identified by the value of an HTTP cookie, whose name is given by the ID directive.

HEADER

Sessions are identified by the value of HTTP header whose name is given by the ID directive.

Session directive: ID "name"

Specifies the session identifier: IP address (for Type IP), query parameter name (for Type URL), cookie name (for Type COOKIE), or header name (for Type HEADER).

Session directive: TTL n

How long can a session be idle (in seconds). A session that has been idle for longer than the specified number of seconds will be discarded. This directive is mandatory.