Session Necessary?

[thefisherman]

When is a session necessary?

Case:

• Site, selling software
• User visits site
• Selects stuff from site
• Enters personal info
• Agrees to the transaction
• Software will be sent to this user (by mail)

So this is one user filling out a form which will be saved on the server for later processing. But what if there are multiple users surfing the same site? Is there any reason to use session?

Or is it applicable when for instance the site will send the software online?

Thankx in advance

FisH

[stolzyboy]

that is the reason to use sessions, so the browser and scripts can distinguish between seperate users, that way you can't get two people in a shopping cart for instance adding stuff to the others cart and so forth, i love sessions

[iceraider]

Whas the difference between sessions and cookies?

[stolzyboy]

therein lies the question---they are somewhat of the same thing, except with cookies you have to check to see whether it is set and you are required to set it, you have to do the same with sessions, and they automatically set cookies for you, ease of use goes to sessions, cookies you have to worry about expiration and that sort, where sessions can and will be killed when the browser closes

[xblue]

when you use sessions, no data is stored in cookie, the cookie only holds a unique id that is needed to recognize the user, while whatever data you need to be persistent between pages is stored on the server (thus cannot be easily modified by the user).

also, in the default configurations session have a fallback mode that passes the id via url automatically in case the client doesn't accept cookies.