django-session-refresh

A simple Django middleware to refresh user sessions periodically (24h by default) to prevent timeout during user activity.

This middleware updates a timestamp in the session data at specified intervals, effectively extending the session's lifetime as long as the user is active.

• Since this middleware depends on user information, it should be placed after Django's AuthenticationMiddleware in the middleware stack.

Installation

1. Run pip install django-session-refresh
2. Add django_session_refresh.middleware.SessionRefreshMiddleware to settings.py ass bellow

MIDDLEWARE = [
    ...
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',  # Django default AuthenticationMiddleware
    'django_session_refresh.middleware.SessionRefreshMiddleware',  # django-session-refresh
    ...
]

Configuration (optional)

The dictionary settings bellow are optional and if not defined in settings.py the default values will be used.

DJANGO_SESSION_REFRESH = {
    # The interval in seconds to refresh the session
    'REFRESH_INTERVAL': 86400,  # 24 hours in seconds

    # The name of the session key to store the last refresh timestamp
    'SESSION_KEY_NAME': 'django_session_refreshed_at',

    # The name of the request attribute to store session refresh information
    'REQUEST_ATTR_NAME': 'django_session_refresh',

    # Skips session refresh for is_staff users
    'SKIP_STAFF_USERS': False,

    # Skips session refresh for is_superuser users
    'SKIP_SUPERUSER_USERS': True,

    # Skips session refresh for static and media file requests
    'SKIP_STATIC_AND_MEDIA': True,

    # Skips session refresh for unauthenticated users
    'SKIP_UNAUTHENTICATED_USERS': True,
}

Request features

After a successful session refresh, the middleware adds the following dictionary attribute to the request object:

• request.django_session_refresh['refreshed']: A boolean indicating whether the session was refreshed during the current request.
• request.django_session_refresh['refreshed_at']: A datetime object representing the timestamp when the session was last refreshed.