PHP Session Problem

shadowhunter

I am having problems with php sessions. The website is served on my computer and am also browsing it thru my computer with IE. Everytime I visit a page where session_start(); is it creates a new session instead of resuming the old session. I can confirm this by looking at the temp file that the session files are being written to.

I've tried using $_session and session_register to set the variables, but the same problem happen, when I go to the next page and have it show the variables stored, it creates a new session instead of resuming. I've tried browsing it by the site URL, by using http://localhost and by the IP and have the same problems each time.

I'm running Win XP, Latest Apache Server and Latest PHP Release. Any help is highly appreciated.

andy02822

If you dont set a time for the session to last, it will automatically terminate when the browser is closed, unless you set PHP.ini to have a default time.

shadowhunter

That doesn't help me, I'm not closing my browser. For example...

Page 1...
<?php
session_start();
session_register("testvar1");
session_register("testvar2");

$testvar1 = "foo";
$testvar2 = "bar";

echo "<a href=page2.php>Page 2</a>";
?>

Page 2...

<?php
session_start();

echo $testvar1;
echo $testvar2;

echo "<a href=page1.php>Page 1</a>";
?>

If someone besides me visits the test pages, it works fine, but if I visit the pages it doesn't work. When each page loads it creates a new temp session file in the temp dir instead of resuming the session.

Weedpacket

If your browser has cookies turned off, and PHP has enable_trans_sid turned off (in php.ini) also, then the session ID won't be retained by the browser; if the browser doesn't send the session ID back (either as a cookie or in the URL) then the server won't know which session to use and will start a new one.

shadowhunter

Obviously the trans id isn't a problem because other visitors to my site are having no problem. Cookies are enables and IE is setup to recieve all cookies.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by shadowhunter
Obviously the trans id isn't a problem because other visitors to my site are having no problem

Well, that's not "obviously" - if they have cookies enabled then trans_sid is irrelevant. But, as it happens:

Cookies are enables and IE is setup to recieve all cookies.

so that is apparently not it. Right, so the next question is: is your browser receiving any cookies? (While we're on the subject, do you get different behaviour from another browser? Mozilla or Firebird with the livehttpheaders extension will let you watch the headers (including cookies) on all the http messages going back and forth.)

iperich

I had a similar problem with XP explorer and Opera browsers (and some Mac), I put session.auto_start=1 in php.ini and it works fine in Opera. I dont try it on xp yet.

okamosy

I ran into this problem, and posted a message but never got a response. Fortunately, I was still able to find an answer.

The reason it doesn't work is that you need to pass the session id in the URL for each page so that PHP knows which session to use.

You can do this by using the SID variable name as follows

echo "<a href=page2.php&SID>Page 2</a>";

This will generate a link as follows:
...page2.php?sessid=<some long string>

I hope this helps!