Sessions

[NikolayZou]

I am having trouble trying to get sessions working, I follow examples in my PHP book, but they don't seem to work, can someone give me an example of how they use sessions.

[etrooper]

Hi I spent a few days recently figuring this out...

Basically first you need to start you doc like this (ie at the very top of the page, before the html headers etc)

<?php
session_start();

This is important I could not get it working otherwise.

Then simply create your $_SESSION variables like this (can be done in or out of a function);

$_SESSION['sessionvariable'] = $someothervariable ;

Then you can call your session variables like this:

$newvar = $_SESSION['sessionvariable'] ;

SO now $_SESSION['sessionvariable'] will always (even after page refresh / change) be assigned the value $someothervariable until you either unset it or change it.

Have a look at :

PHP Manual - session register

Hope this is understandable and helps.

[Norman_Graham]

Hi Nickolay

What etrooper says is bang on target. You may also want to check your php.ini settings. If sessions_autostart is enabled [check it in phpinfo() or directly in the ini file], then you don't need sessions_start(). However, it is disabled by default in the more recent PHP versions. Even if it is enabled, using session_start() is a good plan. Please note that you need to put it at the top of EVERY page which refers to $_SESSION variables, not just the page in which the session first starts. I made this mistake just yesterday.

Note also that session_register() and session_is_registered() are deprecated and should be replaced with a call to $SESSION, just like etroopr has shown. I personally find this easier anyway - I just use isset($SESSION["myvariable"]) instead of session_is_registered().

HTH

Norm

[Roger_Ramjet]

I found a great article that showed me how to use session. Even had a code archive to download the example code.

http://www.sitepoint.com/print/users-php-sessions-mysql

Sitepoint, an invaluable place for articles and examples.

[Norman_Graham]

Hi Roger

Yeah - I've used several articles from Sitepoint. On a completely different topic, I can recommend this article by Kevin Yank about parsing an RSS feed. It's a couple of years old now, but the code still works and I very much like the fact that he provides both a procedural and an OOP approach.

Best o luck

Norm