Doing multiple posts - $_SESSION emptys

kta

I am just starting to work with sessions. Here is the trouble I'm having.

I have a page with a form on it. The form posts to $PHP_SELF. When it posts I load the info into the $_SESSION array.

for example:

$SESSION['1'] = $POST['name'];
$SESSION['2'] = $POST['address']

So at then end of the page count($SESSION) returns 2. Now, if I fill out the form again and post again $SESSION seems to be emptied automatically.

In other words. If I post second time the values from the form do not overwrite the previous values because the previous values seem to no longer be there. Its as if I have $_SESSION=array(); somewhere, but I don't.

So, what is the problem? It seems as if the page is not refreshing so the original values in the $_SESSION array are not being passed forward.

Weedpacket

Could we see the offending code? Without that I can think of two possibilities:

Remember that you need to have session_start() on each page before you use session data.

The other possibility is that PHP has been configured to use cookies and only cookies to transfer session IDs, and the client has been configured to never use cookies.

kta

The code I am working with is fairly long and its hard to post just some snippets of it so I'll just give you the general idea of what I'm doing. I'm writing a shopping cart system that does not use a database to store info. Instead of posting to a script that puts values into a mySQL database I would like it to post to the page the user is currently on a la $PHP_SELF. Now this works fine if the user is on a page and wants to add one item to their cart. The user can click "add to cart" all the values are posted, put into the $SESSION array and then printed back out to the screen in a mini shopping cart table. But say the user wants to add a second item from the same page. When they select another item and click "add to cart" the values are submitted to the $SESSION array and displayed on the screen, but the previous values are gone (they are not overwritten, I am sure). So, either the $_SESSION array is being cleaned out when the user clicks "add to cart" for the second time (unlikely), or posting is not forcing a refresh.

So, when using $PHP_SELF, is the whole page refreshed when the values are posted, or is there some sort of mini refresh where the php code is refreshed but not the rest of the file?

sorry for the long explaination. Hopefully you can understand my problem.. Thanks for the help.