impressionist: NoMethodError (undefined method `cookie_value' for nil:NilClass) in API only Rails project

I’m getting the above error on my API only Rails project.

I think the issue is because we are running an API only Rails App without any cookies, and Impressionist is expecting to be able to retrieve the cookie_value from request.session_options[:id], which is nil for us.

Is there any way to handle this case without requiring cookies? Have I made a mistake here?

If not, would there be any interest in a PR to enable support for API only Rails projects without sessions? If so I’d be happy to implement this. Based on what I’ve seen it shouldn’t be too hard.

This is the full stack for the impressionist part of the error:

impressionist (2.0.0) app/controllers/impressionist_controller.rb:143:in `session_hash'
impressionist (2.0.0) app/controllers/impressionist_controller.rb:60:in `associative_create_statement'
impressionist (2.0.0) app/controllers/impressionist_controller.rb:132:in `direct_create_statement'
impressionist (2.0.0) app/controllers/impressionist_controller.rb:45:in `impressionist_subapp_filter'
impressionist (2.0.0) app/controllers/impressionist_controller.rb:7:in `block in impressionist'

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 4 years ago
Reactions: 11
Comments: 16 (4 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

Better nil guards from calling cookie value on nil or string [Fixes #292] — committed to rposborne/impressionist by deleted user 3 years ago

Most upvoted comments

Issue still exists Had the same error in incognito mode and RSpec system tests

# Quick fix
def show
   ...
  if session.id.present?
    impressionist @question, nil, unique: %i[impressionable_type impressionable_id session_hash]
  end
end

stadniklksndr on Dec 16, 2022

I had that issue when I tried to share url on facebook. Solution was to check if request is xhr. this was my solution and I don’t have that issue anymore Screenshot 2022-05-12 at 21 41 27

bobfly on May 12, 2022

Hi @GraemeHarrison, no I don’t think I ever did. We ended up doing a simple version of what impressionist does in house in the end (basically a hook in the controller followed by saving requests to the DB) since it was good enough for our use case, so I haven’t used the gem since posting the issue.

KNejad on Feb 21, 2021