Sessions in functions

Anon

Hi,
I'm setting a session variable within one of my functions and it seems that when I do this, the values I assign to the session variable do not get registered.

But, if I use the same code but out of a function it works?! Am I being stupid? Any ideas guys?

Cheers,
Jord

alexh

you have to tell your function about the
global session-variable with the keyword "global".

otherwise your function does not know
that this variable exists and cant use it.

do something like this and it should work:

function incSessionCounter() {
global $SessionCounter;

$SessionCounter++;

}

then with every call to incSessionCounter();
your global session-variable will be increased.

hope that works
alex

[deleted]

In my personal opinion it would be better practise to pass the relevant variables along to the function in the paremeters:

function add(&$var)
{
$var++;
}

add($var);

that way you always know which variables are used by a function, and which variables a function can and cannot change in the global scope.

Also, if you have a lot of session variables that you want to use in a function, you can cheat by passing the $HTTP_SESSION_VARS[] array to the function.
This is an associative array containing all the session variables.
$HTTP_SESSION_VARS['var'];

Anon

I don't think I made myself clear. The problem is that the variables are not set. I do it like this:

function start_user_session($username, $password) {
session_start();
session_register("LOGGED_IN");
$LOGGED_IN = array("username" => $username, "id" => session_id());
}

But when I look in the sess_ file, the variables are not registered and I can't use them again.

More ideas? I'm on windows ;-(

Cheers,

Jord

holdech

I had a similar problem.
When I declared the offending session variable "global" IN THE FUNCTION, I could access the values. Without declaring global, it was effectively "not set".

Hope this helps.

[deleted]

Indeed. if you read the manual about functions you'd know that functions have their own scope, so anything you declare in a function is erased when the function exits.

I recommend you start the session in the main script pass any session vars you need to the function using arguments.

Anon

Thanks for all your help,
I'll give it a try.

Cheers,
Jord