Sessions

[klycette]

I was wondering what the main functions of sessions are. When someone logs into their account, I understand that a session can be created to keep track of their movements and give them content specified to who they are. But what can sessions do that can't be accomplished by just passing along their username and customizing their account and what they see based on that? I'm sure I'm missing the point, but I want to know what it is. Thanks.

[barand]

You can pass details along so long as the user plays by your rules and uses your links and buttons. But what if they just type in a url to get somewhere that they know quickly? With a session you could check if they are allowed to be there.

[klycette]

That's what I was wondering about. So do you usually just use sessions to see if they've logged in to their account? Once that's done, does it matter what you pass along from one page to the next?

[barand]

That's one use. Use them to store any info that you might want to store between pages while they are online. If you want to store info from one day or month to the next, use cookies.

[klycette]

What kind of information could they store? Just curious as to some examples.

[barand]

All depends on the application.

For ecommerce site - shopping cart contents, value
For geographical application - postcode or zip code location
banking - account number
etc
etc
etc