Session Messages

This page is meant to evaluate some of the different session/cookie message/notification engines out there for potential inclusion in the Django core. It is a work in progress so please contribute (your notification engine here) or other changes as you see fit.

For more information see:

• Ticket #4604
• ​http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers/browse_thread/thread/eba93088c649022b
• ​http://www.caktusgroup.com/blog/2009/06/19/towards-a-standard-for-django-session-messages/

Criteria

Criteria necessary for inclusion in the core:

• Support message passing for anonymous users
• Avoid database/cache queries if possible
• Support larger messages that don't fit in a cookie (> 4kb)
• Don't lose messages if they're not displayed to the user (lazy message loading)
• Signs cookie-based messages
• Provide a standard, intuitive interface so that reusable apps can provide feedback related to the current session
• Needs community approval/support
• Needs to be the "de facto" standard implementation

Available Options

Name and Link	Anonymous user support	Minimal DB Access	Supports messages > 4kb	Lazy loads messages	Signed cookies	Standard interface
​django-notify	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
​django-flash	yes	sometimes	sometimes	no	yes	no
​django-flash-status	yes	sometimes	sometimes	no	yes	yes
​django-cnotes	yes	yes	no	no	yes	yes

• yes means yes, always
• sometimes means under certain conditions (e.g., an engine might support large messages if the session is used, and avoid DB access if a cookie is used, but not both)
• no means no, not in the current implementation

Please update this table with new options or corrected information as necessary.