Re: Per session variables

[Steve Atkins <steve(at)blighty(dot)com>]

On May 27, 2006, at 12:13 PM, Richard Smith wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I've googled about a bit, and found some ideas for solving this  
> problem, but I thought I'd pose the question, in the hope that  
> someone can suggest something.
>
> I've got a web application that needs to do audit logging, taking  
> some information provided by the webapp such as user, request path,  
> remote IP etc...
>
> Since I can't create users in postgres, and would like to be able  
> to do the audit logging transparently, would anyone have any ideas  
> as to a way I can do this kind of thing.
>
> I need to avoid using external libraries if possible so if anyone  
> has any tricks I'd appreciate it.
>
> I did find a mention of some features in 8.0 that I might be able  
> to exploit, however there was no details of what those features  
> were, your typical useless reply to a mailing list post. There was  
> also a myfunc module that would fill my needs, but I don't really  
> want to load external modules into the db.
>
> I'm running PG8.1

I do it using a temporary table with one row that the webapp populates
with the username (and any other session information) when it connects
or changes user. I also have an underlying permanent table with generic
information in it, so that triggers and suchlike still work when  
accessing the
DB by hand.

Cheers,
  Steve