sessions and CLI, in PHP 4.3.4RC2

ftrudeau

Hello fellows.

10,000$ question here.

Im currently working on a collection of scripts that will work in command line only. Im using the latest version of PHP.

Ive got problems figuring out how to start a session with a specific session_id. Maybe im doing something wrong here, but ive got no idea what.

It seams that if I call session_start($id), where $id is a sessionid that i know for sure was already registered earlier, that specific session does not get initialized.

See this simple test script

#!/usr/bin/php -q
<?
$sessid = $argv['1'];
print "Starting session: $sessid\n";

session_start($sessid);

if (session_id() != $sessid) {
   print "Requested session to initialize: $sessid\n";
   print "Initialized session ID: " . session_id() . "\n";
   print "Session ID differs ?? \n";
}

if (empty($_SESSION)) {
   print "SESSION empty ??\n";
}
?>

And its output :

./session-get.php 3112a7c05161cc77e9fe1a1fe9e6348c
Starting session: 3112a7c05161cc77e9fe1a1fe9e6348c
Requested session to initialize: 3112a7c05161cc77e9fe1a1fe9e6348c
Initialized session ID: 5f4ba9af84ef44270bcb0ea7eda38aa3
Session ID differs ??
SESSION empty ??

Please gimme some pointers here 😉

nightowl

what makes you think you could start a session with a predefined ID ? Why would you want to do that ?

http://be.php.net/manual/en/function.session-start.php

nowhere is mentioned that it would be possible ...

ftrudeau

What makes you think I can start a session with a predefined ID ?
Well, its in the doc :

session_start() creates a session or resumes the current one based on the current session id that's being passed via a request, such as GET, POST, or a cookie.

Why would I want to do that ?

I just need to use it, thats why. A lot of data is being grabbed from mysql / mssql in my scripts, that is a little over 6MB, when saved into a session in /tmp. This involves a lot of overhead, and I plan to reduce this by using 'cached' data.

Voila.
Thanks.

nightowl

Originally posted by ftrudeau
Well, its in the doc :

Why would I want to do that ?

I just need to use it, thats why. A lot of data is being grabbed from mysql / mssql in my scripts, that is a little over 6MB, when saved into a session in /tmp. This involves a lot of overhead, and I plan to reduce this by using 'cached' data.

Voila.
Thanks.

I don't like your tone in your reply. We are just here volunteering to help you out with a problem. But anyway ...

1) you cannot start with a predefined session ID. You are trying to pass that data via start_session() but this function does not take an argument. It can indeed build upon a session ID wich was passed, but not in your code. Session data is not stored on the server forever so this is not the way to handle this. If you want to use your database as cache, use a cookie, which you can make permanent.

nightowl

Originally posted by ftrudeau
Well, its in the doc :

Why would I want to do that ?

I just need to use it, thats why. A lot of data is being grabbed from mysql / mssql in my scripts, that is a little over 6MB, when saved into a session in /tmp. This involves a lot of overhead, and I plan to reduce this by using 'cached' data.

Voila.
Thanks.

I don't like your tone in your reply. We are just here volunteering to help you out with a problem. But anyway ...

you cannot start with a predefined session ID. You are trying to pass that data via start_session() but this function does not take an argument. It can indeed build upon a session ID wich was passed, but not in your code. Session data is not stored on the server forever so this is not the way to handle this. If you want to use your database as cache, use a cookie, which you can make permanent.

HalfaBee

Do cookies work from the command line?

I think you need to use something other than sessions to control your data problems.
Check out www.php.net/session_id

HalfaBee

ftrudeau

Well it seams you were both right ! 🙂
session_start does not take an argument. The key is to call session_id before starting the session in order to set the current sessid.
That solved my problem.
nightowl, sorry for my tone, and god bless this forum.
Thank you for your help.