session/header trouble

Dolemite50

Hi,
I am using phpBB integrated with my own site and appending the session_id to all my links. It seems to be working fine using methods like this:

$index = append_sid("/index.php");
<td><a href="<?php echo $index ?>"><img src="images/buttons_02.jpg"> </a>

but I am having trouble trying to get it to go in a header without having it freak out on the "&" symbol.

This is my latest attempt:

$bp = append_sid("/bandpage.php?bandid=$userid");
//$bp = rawurldecode($bp);
//$bp = stripslashes($bp);
header("Location: $bp");

I have tried all combinations of the rem'd sections. Any suggestions?
Thanks alot.
But it is still putting "&" instead of "&" in the url.

devinemke

from the manual on the [man]header[/man] function:

HTTP/1.1 requires an absolute URI as argument to Location: including the scheme, hostname and absolute path, but some clients accept relative URIs. You can usually use $SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], $SERVER['PHP_SELF'] and dirname() to make an absolute URI from a relative one yourself

weekender

also from the manual page on session handling functions

PHP is capable of transforming links transparently. Unless you are using PHP 4.2 or later, you need to enable it manually when building PHP. Under Unix, pass --enable-trans-sid to configure. If this build option and the run-time option session.use_trans_sid are enabled, relative URIs will be changed to contain the session id automatically.

what this means is that if you turn on the session.use_trans_sid configuration variable (or if cookies are unavailable on the client) then instead of saving the PHP_SESS_ID as a cookie, it will amend it to the url automatically.

This means you don't need to write a function to do this!

adam

Dolemite50

Thanks for the great feedback, guys.

Adam,
I searched that page over and it looks like its a little over my head. 🙁

I have been going through my entire site ammending the ses_id to all my links and now it looks like it may not have been neccesary? OUCH!

Can you PLEASE give me an example of what to change in order to make my entire site append the id?

Thanks alot.

Kyle

Dolemite50

Also,
I am currently using headers throughout my site like this:
header("Location: somepage.php");
which isnt absolute but working fine. If I understand you correctly, this wont work on the client side in some instances? Is that right?

What do you guys think would be the best approach to take here? I'm officially bummed.

If I do this:

$bp = append_sid("/bandpage.php?bandid=$userid"); 
exit($bp);

It displays the link perfectly, but if I do this:

$bp = append_sid("/bandpage.php?bandid=$userid"); header("Location: $bp");

it changes the & to & in the url; but still takes me to bandpage.php.

Heelllppp pleasseee. 🙂

weekender

in the root folder of your website, create a file called .htaccess, unless it's already there

in .htaccess, add the following line

php_value session.use_trans_sid 1

this should set php to append the session id to the url

adam

devinemke

let's back up a sec. we're dealing with 2 separate issues here.

session propagation: the optimal way to do this is via cookies (which is the default). PHP's session mechanism will automagically take care of setting the cookie. since cookies are not always available you can also propagate sessions by passing the session ID on the URL. as weekender pointed out, PHP supports the trans_id directive (in php.ini) which will automagically append all relative links with the session ID. again, cookies are the best way but if you want to use URL session propagation then you have a few options. you can manually add the session id to all links:
```
echo '<a href="file.php?' . session_name() . '=' . session_id . '">link</a>';
```
or have PHP do it for you by setting session.use_trans_sid = 1 in your php.ini. if you do not have access to your php.ini then you can use the [man]ini_set[/man] function or you may be able to use weekender's htaccess idea (this will only work if PHP is running as an Apache module).
regardless of your session propagation issue if you wish to use the [man]header[/man] function you should always use a full absolute URL (instead of relative). as the manual page points out you can easily create an absolute URL on the fly:
```
header('Location: http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) . '/' . $relative_url);
```

Dolemite50

Thanks again 🙂

My first question right off the bat is if I have already gone through the trouble of appending the id to all my links, and then I append the id in htaccess, will it append it twice? Do I need to go back and remove all of my append_id statements?

Also, my site gives people the option to store a cookie or not. What is the best method to use if some of the members will have cookies and some wont?

Thanks again, I really appreciate your input.

devinemke

Originally posted by Dolemite50
My first question right off the bat is if I have already gone through the trouble of appending the id to all my links, and then I append the id in htaccess, will it append it twice? Do I need to go back and remove all of my append_id statements?

if you are building an app that that will reside just on one server over which you have some control then it's up to you. i would reomove all of the manual links and let PHP do it for you. if you are building something to be portable to a wide variey of servers and configs then i would add some logic that checks for the trans_id directive and then conditionally add the session ID manually.

Originally posted by Dolemite50
Also, my site gives people the option to store a cookie or not. What is the best method to use if some of the members will have cookies and some wont?

again, you need to add code to check to see of cookies are set and conditionally add the session ID to the URLs.

PHP comes with a wide variey of functions to check the current server configuration (and some functions to check client config too). i suggest you look at the PHP Options & Information page in the manual.