Need to retain $content - Help

[ppowell]

<?php
   $fileID = @fopen("$SERVLET_SELF/ppowell.ChatServlet?message=" . urlencode('/n'), 'r');
   if ($fileID) {
    $content = @fread($fileID, HTMLRetriever::$MAX_URL_SIZE);
    @fclose($fileID);
    echo $content;
    /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	New 4/6/2004: Preserve each value of $content into a session variable to ensure
	that if there is a disconnect with the servlet the cached content will display to
	the user instead, not noticing much of a difference
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    $_SESSION['nick_content'] = $content;
   } else {
    echo $_SESSION['nick_content'];
   }

?>

This code should allow for me to retain the value of $content in a session. The script that contains this code will be auto-refreshed from the client end. On occasions the URL called by @fopen() will hang up or be locked out; when that happens, I want to display the retained value of $content anyway.

The code I wrote I thought did that does not work, the session variable is empty upon return to this same script via auto-refresh. If the session is a bad idea, what should I use instead?

Thanx
Phil

[mrhappiness]

i miss the mandatory

sesison_start();

at the top of every script

[ppowell]

Produced a weird side effect upon using session_start(). The two PHP scripts that use this are within a frame, and whenever the @fopen() locks up in each of the scripts, the entire frame just freezes in place for about a minute, then everything returns to normal. Is this typical behavior of a page with session_start()?

Thanx
Phil