query based on session variable?

[orionblue]

Hi there,

I have just started playing with sessions to allow for members to login and navigate througout a members only website. I am trying to make it as secure as possible and so I have a couple of things I wanted to check with you guys to make sure I'm doing it properly (no bad habits created).

$_SESSION['user_id'] - this is registered when the member logs in.

I want to make a query that goes something like:

SELECT * FROM members WHERE user_id=$user_id

I thought it should work if I write:

SELECT * FROM members WHERE user_id=$_SESSION['user_id']

but it didn't. (as in the result didn't show, but it does if I hard code in 5 as the $user_id for example).

I'm sorry if this is a simple question, I've re-written the scripts a few times now to become familiar with them and it's making me a lot tired and a little stupid... Probably missing the obvious...

[LordShryku]

You just need to sepearte the superglobal from the string. It's good practice to seperate all of your variables from the string. Like so

$sql = "SELECT * 
        FROM   members 
        WHERE  user_id = '".$_SESSION['user_id']."'";
$result = mysql_query($sql); 

[orionblue]

YAYYYYYY! Worked, of course.

Love learning to implement things like that that I see but don't always understand.

thanks LordShryku!