SmartCookieStore is a fix for the current (as of 2.3.5) Rails CookieStore. The problem with the CookieStore as is, is that it sends a Set-Cookie header whenever the session (including the flash) is accessed. This means that whenever you have a call to flash[:notice] in your layout file, a Set-Cookie will be sent to the client. Even if the session/flash is completely empty! This is problematic when you want to use something like Varnish. By default it doesn't cache pages that send a header (and rightly so).

This plugin adds a new CookieStore, the SmartCookieStore that checks if the session is empty and only sends the Set-Cookie header when the session is not empty.

gem install smart_cookie_store

And add it to your config/environment.rb:

config.gem "smart_cookie_store"

script/plugin install git://github.com/msales/smart_cookie_store.git

The configure your app to use the new SmartCookieStore:

ActionController::Base.session_store = :smart_cookie_store

This is an initial release that was only tested on Rails 2.3.5!

This plugin should also include a SmartAbstractStore that fixes the Rails AbstractStore. This is the parent class of the ActiveRecordStore which would fix its behaviour in turn. Some unit tests would be good, too ;)