Sessions from within a class

[anortrup]

Hi every one, working on writing a PHP authentication class. Within the class I have the login() method that once you are authenticated against the mysql database sets 2 session variables, ($SESSION['name'] and $SESSION['auth_level']). The code looks like this:

function login($user, $pass)
{
//Authenticates user information against database
//$user = username
//$pass = password

$pass = crypt($pass, $user);
$sql = "SELECT count(*) 
  	       FROM users
                   WHERE username = '$user'
       AND password = '$pass'";
if($this->db->get_var($sql)==1)
{
     //successful authentication
     $sql = "SELECT name, auth_level 
	FROM users
	WHERE username = '$user'
	AND password = '$pass'";
	$name = $this->db->get_row($sql);

	//create our session
	session_start();
	$_SESSION['name'] = $name->name;
$_SESSION['auth_level'] = $name->auth_level;

	return true;
}
else
{
       return false;
}

}

Please note that I am using the ez_sql class for database conectivity (it works great and saves a lot of time check it out at: http://http://php.justinvincent.com.

However I find that when I try to access this these session variables outside of the class I get an error that the variable is not registered.

Am I missing something?

Many Thanks,
Andy

[adamgeorge]

Heyya

Yeah, the problem is prolly with your syntax.

<?
$_SESSION['name'] = $name->name; 
$_SESSION['auth_level'] = $name->auth_level; 
?>

Do you realise what you're doing there? $name is a object. No where in your function did you create a object called $name. If $name is an object outside the scope of the login function, then you need to call it explicitly:

<?
$_SESSION['name'] = $this->name->name; 
$_SESSION['auth_level'] = $this->name->auth_level; 
?>

... but anyway... I don't see the point of doing that. If you're going to use a class, you should at least stick to the object-oriented methodology. There's no real point in creating a session variable inside your class... that doesn't really fit with the OO approach.

I made a Authentication class, and did something similar. I used cookies though instead of sessions. but anyhow, what you should do is just add some extra methods to your Name class or whatever it's actually called.:

function getName(){
return $this->name;
}

function getAuthLevel(){
return $this->auth_level;
}

then instead of calling $_SESSION['name'] just call $name->getName();

well, hope that makes sense.

cya man,
-Adam 🙂

[anortrup]

Thanks alot for the help. Cookie approach works better. Just one point the name class is a result of how the ez_sql class works. So that is created through that.

Again many thanks,
Andy