How to setup Redis for sessions on an Expressjs application

Here is how you do it:

var redis_config = config.redis;

var session = require('express-session');

var RedisStore = require('connect-redis')(session);

var redis = require('redis');

var client = redis.createClient(redis_config.port, redis_config.host);

// These 3 has to be declared in this order or

// your sessions will fail and you won't know why! :)

app.use(session({

    store: new RedisStore({

      host: redis_config.host,

      port: redis_config.port,

      client: client,

      logErrors: true,

    }),

    secret: 'your-secret-goes-here',

    maxAge: Date.now() + (15 * 86400 * 1000),

    saveUninitialized: false,

    resave: false,

    secure: false,

}));

app.use(passport.initialize());
app.use(passport.session());

Note the order of app.use() statements for session and passportJS initialization.

As you may see, Redis usually only needs a hostname and port for establishing a connection.