Node.js + Socket.io Storing data in sockets

Question

I am currently building an application using node.js and using the socket.io module. When a user connects I am storing data specific to the user against their socket. For example

io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {

    socket.on('sendmessage', function (data, type) {

        socket.variable1 = 'some value';
        socket.variable2 = 'Another value';
        socket.variable3 = 'Yet another value';
    });
});

While this works my question is, is this a good way to do it. I am effectively storing session data but is there a better way to do it?

Answer 1

I think that you should store those variables in another type of object. Keep the socket object only for the communication. You may generate an unique id for every user and create a map. Something like this:

var map = {},
numOfUsers = 0;

io.sockets.on('connection', function (socket) {
    numOfUsers += 1;
    var user = map["user" + numOfUsers] = {};
    socket.on('sendmessage', function (data, type) {
        user.variable1 = 'some value';
        user.variable2 = 'Another value';
        user.variable3 = 'Yet another value';
    });
});