Rails session does not persist?

Off course not if your project structure it’s the same as my one. If rails new it’s used with --api flag then it won’t store the session hash after a refresh. It gave me a hard time because I was checking with byebug in my create session method:

def create
    @user = User.find_by(email: params[:email])
    if @user && @user.authenticate(params[:password])
      session[:user_id] = @user.id
      render json: {
        status: :created,
        logged_in: true,
        user: @user
      }
    else
      render json: {status: 401}
    end
      byebug
  end

In the byebug console my session[:user_id] had the right value, but, it was not persisted. After hours spent on google and stackoverflow I found the solution. In my config/application.rb file, inside the Application class I added the following:

config.middleware.use ActionDispatch::Cookies
config.middleware.use ActionDispatch::Session::CookieStore, key: '_backend_chat_app'

That sorted the problem, and after a refresh, my session hash is still there.