passing arrays

DragonHighLord

when you want to pass a variable from one part of page to the other using a form the action is page_name?var=$var and it sends it over., but when I do that for an array it doesn't work. What I am doing to when the user comes onto a page it defines some variables as arrays in one funtion, then it adds values into those arrays in another function, then in the 3rd function, it prints out the values thru a foreach loop. All this works perfectly, except after all this happens, they have a form that will add another item into that array. So when it comes back to that page, it gives errors that values passed to foreach loop are not arrays. I do test echo on the second reload of the page(which is another option on the mian switch, there is no value of the array at all) What is happening, it is somehow not storing those arrays I guess. When I defined them I made them all global
$GLOBALS['array'] = $array;
I made sure that the first line of every function says..... global $array;
That didn't work, so then I went into every function where those arrays are modified and remade them $GLOBALS at the end, that didn't work. I even added return($array), that didn't work. So I'm out of ideas. Not sure how to make it keep all the values in the array to keep using them while the person is in this area. I can't assign all this as a session because, the session_register is used for user authentication. Any ideas are welcome, if anybody wants the actual code to look at, I'll be glad to e-mail it to you. It's not really that much, just too much to put here. Thanks for all the help

Weedpacket

Um, how are you passing arrays? Are you submitting them to pages or passing them to functions? You say "passing them to functions" but you describe submitting them to pages.

If you want to put an array in a URL for some unearthly reason, you'll need to urlencode(serialize($the_array)) first. Then at the other end $the_array=unserialize($the_form_field).

DragonHighLord

Honestly, I'm not really sure how they are getting "passed", I just know that the aray is there and items can be it in when the page is first visited, but after the form is submitted that contains the other items to put into the array, that array doesn't exist. So I'm not sure if I should be "passing" it on somehow or making it I guess resident for a while so that it can be accessed again and added to. And for record, the array is not in the action url of the form, I just tried to put in there once since it wasn't working, but since that didn't change things, I took it out.

Weedpacket

Well, no.

One of the first things to learn about http is that it doesn't remember anything from one request to the next, whether it be for a page, or image, or whatever; they're completely separate events and the server doesn't bother to keep track of who is requesting what (that's far too much work). When a PHP script finishes running, it shuts down and all the variables it contains are deleted and the memory containing them freed back up to deal with the next request.

If you want something to be remembered from one request to the next, it has to be saved somewhere. And, since the server doesn't keep track of who is requesting what, it's up to the client to identify itself when it makes its request.

PHP comes with a function and an array that together achieve this. The function is session_start(). Put that at the start of each script that deals with anything that needs remembering during a session.

The array is $_SESSION. After calling session_start(), you can put stuff in this array and get it out again just as you would for any other array.

See the manual for details and elaborations, or search this forum.