Django session documentation is wrong

[bryan]

​http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.1/topics/http/sessions/#using-sessions-out-of-views

You shouldn't pass a session_key into SessionStore, that gets generated automatically when you save() it.

>>> from django.contrib.sessions.backends.db import SessionStore
>>> s = SessionStore()
>>> s['last_login'] = datetime.datetime(2005, 8, 20, 13, 35, 10)
>>> s['last_login']
datetime.datetime(2005, 8, 20, 13, 35, 0)
>>> s.save()
>>> s.session_key
'2b1189a188b44ad18c35e113ac6ceead

>>> from django.contrib.sessions.models import Session
>>> s = Session.objects.get(pk='2b1189a188b44ad18c35e113ac6ceead')
>>> s.expire_date
datetime.datetime(2005, 8, 20, 13, 35, 12)

[Russell Keith-Magee]

You *should* provide a key if you know which session you want to use. If provide a session key, Django will use that key specifically. If you omit the key, one will be generated. However, as far as I can tell, the fact that a session key will be generated if one isn't provided isn't a documented behaviour.

[elbarto]

I have notice that it still missing an import (datetime) in current source and also in my patch.

When:

slast_login = datetime.datetime(2005, 8, 20, 13, 35, 10)

It returns:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<console>", line 1, in <module>

NameError: name 'datetime' is not defined

I fixed it in new patch.

[Tim Graham]

(In [15053]) Fixed #13020 - add clarifying note to SessionStore. thanks elbarto for the patch.

[Tim Graham]

(In [15054]) [1.2.X] Fixed #13020 - add clarifying note to SessionStore. thanks elbarto for the patch.

Backport of r15053 from trunk.