User account on web site. Cookies? Sessions?

[torva]

I want to make a site where users can store travellinginformation in their own account. I need some directions of how to implement this.

My thoughts of how to do this is as follow:
When a user registers or "logs in" with a username and a password, a cookie is sent to the user with a unique username. I'd guess you would do this with setcookie. A session variable is also made with $_SESSION[]. When the user would update his account, he would get the username from the cookie, so he could send this along with the other information.

Is this right? I would be really glad if someone gave me some thoughts about this!!!
Cheers T🙂

[devinemke]

cookies/sessions are only for temporary storage. if you wish to store long term user info you need a database (like mysql ).

[torva]

I do use mysql. I thought you would use cookies so that the user could send his username and info and then it should be stored in a mysql database. identify himself and log his updates in a mysql db. how else would you do it? I guess the user could write his username in a textfield each time he sends info that should be stored in the db, but that would be really stressful.