why won't my session vars change value?

Anon

Hi all, this is a re-post as I think 'Vincent' must have gone out.
Please check out the simple scripts below and tell me why $name will not change values?

thanks

Nick

<?
// ses.php
session_start();
session_register("name");
?>

<body>
<form method="post" action ="ses2.php">
input name<br>
<input type="text" name="name">
<br>
<br>
<input type="submit">
</body>

<?
// ses2.php
session_start();
?>

<?
// ses3.php
session_start();
?>

<body>
<br>
<br>
and the name is <? print($name); ?>
<br>
<br>
<a href="ses.php">start again</a>
</body>

I always get the first name I entered?

Hope someone can point out the error of my ways!

much appriciated

Nick

Anon

Dear Nick,

are you by chance testing this on a home server? I had a similar problem i couldnt resolve i had to unregister all variables to change them and i also couldnt use session_destroy(). I come to find out that the problem wasnt my code at all but that i needed to reset the permission on apache because you are given almost no permission if you use defaults.

Anon

That sounds more than feasable, I'm using a complete dev package from nusphere.com and I've read so much stuff on sessions I'm convinced I've got it right!

Can you give me an Ïdea of what to change in apache? I'm very new to all of this still and I don't think I'd know what to look for?

Many thanks

Nick

Anon

I just uploaded my test pages to my server and they don't work there either so I guess thats not it.

Nick

Anon

I think there was something similar to this a few days ago?

I think, when the form is posted, the value is put into $name, but then when you're registering the session, it's being overwritten with the session's $name. Try changing the name of your field in the form to newname, and then after the session_Register, put $name = $newname.

Hope that helps,

Danny

knickerlas

Cheers Danny
I've got it now!
I've just posted a related question though which I would appreciate you taking a look at.(if you have the time of course!)
Ill paste it here in case you miss it.

Hi folks
How do I keep the users input ( in a text field or a checked box etc ) when the user hits 'back'

At the moment I get a blank form when I hit 'back'

The forms are all conditional include() files.

Cheers

Nick

Anon

This is something that puzzles me. Some times when I visit a site and fill in a form, the server hangs, I hit back, and my browsers kept it, however sometimes it's a blank form (which is really annoying when you typed a long bloody post!!). I think if the page is made not to cache, it will request another, and therefore be blank.

If your varialbes are in a session, I think you should be able to use:

echo "<INPUT TYPE=\"TEXT\" NAME=\"name\" VALUE=\"$name\">";

or if it's not in a php line:

Hope that helps. If I got your problem wrong, it probably won't help!

Danny

knickerlas

Actually I've sussed it now, somebody told me to use
session_cache_limiter('public');
bfore session_start(); on all pages to be affected.
It works a treat. It seems that if you're using sessions, form entries of any kind are not cached. (weird? maybe security issue?)

You can also use 'nocache' and 'private' as the argument.

Thanks for all the help Danny.

Nick

Anon

Glad to see you fixed it.

So what does session_cache_limiter("public") do?

knickerlas

Apparently, if set to 'public' it ensures that session vars will be cached. I'm still a little confused though because whilst it fixed the problem on my PC, when I uploaded to my host there was no problem (I found this out 'cos my hosts version of PHP doesn't support the function so I had to ditch it)
Its all a bit tricky really

Nick