[go-nuts] Gorilla Sessions Tutorial confusion

It's not entirely clear what you're trying to do. This function signature
(type)

func StartSession(response http.ResponseWriter, request *http.Request, user
User) *sessions.Session

... doesn't satisfy the http.Handler interface
(http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/#Handler) as-is, so you either need to do
that or just lean on the http.HandlerFunc type to do it for you. For the
most part, you can just drop the session code into your existing handlers.
If you want to get fancy and have separate functions (middleware) that do
this for you, you'll need to write code that: a) creates the session; b)
passes it to the handler via a request context; and c) saves the session
before any handler writes to the http.ResponseWriter.

The "simplest" way is to just write http.HandlerFuncs.

var store = sessions.NewCookieStore([]byte("something-very-secret"))

func HelloHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
// Get the session; noting that "Get" creates a new session if none exists
yet
sess, err := store.Get(r, "my-app-name")
if err != nil {
http.Error(w, "No good", http.StatusInternalServerError)
return
}
  // do things - parse POST form values, fetch the user details from a
database, etc.
// user := User{Name: someDBResult, Email: someOtherDBResult}
  session.Values["user"] = user
  // Save the session
err := sess.Save(r, w)
if err != nil {
http.Error(w, "No good", http.StatusInternalServerError)
return
}
  // Write to the http.ResponseWriter - whether it be a template, JSON
response, etc.\
}

If you want to get beyond that, you'll need to look at either creating
custom handler types (so you can pass the session around), or using a
request contex <http://www.gorillatoolkit.org/pkg/context>t to do so by
passing the initialised session to the handler.

If I've misunderstood what you're trying to do, hash out some steps in a
list starting from when the request comes in so it's clearer.