Can you store an array in a Session?

[Arc]

I am attempting to build an Ecomerce thingymajig and I was wondering what the best way is to store the items being purchased.

If a user goes to a page that has a shirt on it

Red Shirt

Sizes | Price | Qty
small 15.00 3
med 20.00 0
Lrg 25.00 1

Then they hit add to cart, how would I store this info in the session? Would I add it to a string then store the string in the session?

For example say the user has already added a couple blue shirts

My string would look like this, in this order

ItemName-Size-Price-Qty

SessionRegister[Items];

$Items="BlueShirt-S-15.00-3/BlueShirt-L-25.00-5/"

Then when they went to add the red shirts I would add to the string

$Items.="RedShirt-S-15.00-3/RedShirt-L-25.00-1/"

So I would end up with a string like this

"BlueShirt-S-15.00-3/BlueShirt-L-25.00-5/RedShirt-S-15.00-3/RedShirt-L-25.00-1/"

Then when I wanted to get the items I would create an array by using explode

TheItems = explode("/",$Items)

Then to get the individual stats of each item I would use another array

TheStats = explode("-",TheItems[0])

So then I could say

$ItemName = $TheStats[0]
$ItemSize = $TheStats[1]
$ItemPrice = $TheStats[2]
$ItemQty = $TheStats[3]

Is that how this is done? I;ve never done it before so I am not sure this is the best way to go... Any input would be great!

Thanks!😃 😃

[dalecosp]

Sure you can!!

A basic structure would collect the data from the db of items when the use clicks "add to cart" and create an array. I create the array item()

if ($new) {
$_SESSION['cart']=array();
$item=array($sku, $qty, $size, $color, $unit_price);

$_SESSION['cart'][]=$item;
//this adds the $item array to the array
// $_SESSION['cart']

It gets a bit complex, but this is the way it's done, short of wrapping everything up in OOP...

[Arc]

So what you are saying is have an array of arrays?

Where

$_SESSION['cart']=array(); is declaring the session as an array

then $item=array($sku, $qty, $size, $color, $unit_price);
is creating an array with the items stats

then $_SESSION['cart'][]=$item;

is adding the array to the next availible slot in the session array?

So when I wanted to display the contents of the cart I would do this?

I'm just writing this on the fly so forgive any simple syntax errors..

For each($_SESSION['cart'] as $ItemArray){

Print $ItemArray[0]."<br>";
Print $ItemArray[1]."<br>";
Print $ItemArray[2]."<br>";
Print $ItemArray[3]."<br>";
Print $ItemArray[4]."<br>";

}

Would that display every stat of every item in the session?

Thnaks!😃 😃

[dalecosp]

Basically, yes; can you actually seperate 'for' and 'each' like that? (I need to read the manual, eh? 🙂 )

for ($x=0; $x<count($_SESSION['cart']; $x++) {
echo $_SESSION['cart'][$x]['sku'];
echo $_SESSION['cart'][$x]['qty'];
echo $_SESSION['cart'][$x]['color'];
}

or while(), or foreach(), as you did.

The problem gets to be that multi-dim arrays (hashes?) can fry your brain circuits occasionally, so you have to get up and go for a walk once in a while....