CakePHP Losing or Missing Session?

  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 40.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 41.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 42.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 43.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 44.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 45.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 46.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 47.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 48.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 49.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 50.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 51.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 56.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 57.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 58.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 59.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 60.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 61.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 62.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 63.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 64.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 65.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 66.
  • warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MDT/-6.0/DST' instead in /home/lyniqne/public_html/planetcakephp.org/drupal/sites/all/modules/token/token_node.inc on line 67.
Submitted by Derick Ng on 13 December 2008 - 1:23pm

I have my fair share of problems with session in Cake so I thought I can share the two important configurations in app/config/core.php which affects how Cake handles the session.

Session.checkAgent
Setting this to TRUE means Cake will store the user agent header of a request when a new session is created. On subsequent request, the user agent header sent is compared with the value stored in the session. If it does not match, the current session will be destroyed and a new session gets created.

This rarely causes problem unless you have embedded Flash or Java objects making separate requests to the application. You must take note to send the user agent string of the browser in that case. If you are using something like Aurigma’s Image Uploader where the user agent is not configurable, you have to set this to FALSE instead.

Security.level
Besides the session timeout, this will affect whether the session ID gets regenerated between requests and whether session.referer_check is set.

With session ID regenerated, there will be problems when your application does any Ajax calls. An Ajax request does not set the cookie as requested by the server which causes the browser to send the session ID of a previous request which will have already been destroyed.

Referrer check is done on the hostname level in Cake and in theory it should not cause any problems. Weirdly, I have a one time login link which redirects user to another location and it works in Firefox but not Internet Explorer. My guess is that Internet Explorer does not set the referrer header properly if it gets redirected. You can log the HTTP_REFERER headers to verify that though.

Anyways, the valid values:

  • “high” – session ID regenerated and referrer check set
  • “medium” – referrer check set
  • “low” – none